Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants: Possibilist Ecologies in ...

Bingham 55
being who has done nothing to deserve this. Shane places the blame on Rick for his loss
of stability and the chance to have love. Graphically, this scene accentuates the internal
turmoil of the moment through the absence of backgrounds in the close-up shots which
juxtapose Shane and his unarmed target. Four of the six panels on this particular page
have plain white backgrounds and use negative space to focus the attention of the readers
upon dialogue. 3
On the following page, Shane cocks his shotgun and turns it toward Rick, ready to
fire. Of the five panels which appear on this page, the first, fourth, and fifth occupy its
entire width. The second and third are completely devoid of drawn backgrounds; the
former illustrates Shane aiming his gun at Rick with a descriptive speech balloon that
opens up into the gutter once more, while the latter illustrates Rick raising his hand in
surrender. Both men are positioned at the center of the page. Putting each man side by
side emphasizes the immediacy of the scenario and oddly seems to place the two in an
equal stance. The fourth panel, which is longer than these two, confirms this equality as
it depicts Shane's wincing face as a bullet tears through his neck (Figure 17). This image
directly parallels the moment when the camp was overrun by zombies and Amy was
unexpectedly bitten in the neck (Figure 10). The bullet tears through Shane's neck as the
creature's teeth ripped through hers. Black ink representing blood appears to squirt
toward the right of the panel, indicating the velocity of the bullet. Extending the
trajectory of the bullet into the realm of moral or ethical metaphor, it could be argued that
killing Shane is a step in the right direction. Behind Shane, “BLAM!” spans across the
background. The letters are so large there is only a half millimeter gap between their
edges and the panel's border in certain spots. Shane's head stands in for the “A,”