^^^
Hollywood. That is I fear this will end. Hollywood. That one word is the gist of the problem for me for AOW and the March to War and maybe even a bit before that.
Twice we've had Hilltop armies arrive out of the fucking blue to save Rick's ass. We've also of recent had Saviors suddenly become Annie Oakley's shooting guns out of peoples hands. We've had Andrea, my favorite character, somehow kill a guy she had no business killing. I don't read TWD to see Michael Bay hack shit like that, or to fucking Tigers. I read the TWD because Kirkman has taken genre and turned it into powerful literature. And, zombies aside, the story has also always been pretty realistic with how it deals with things. Things like Carl killing Shane, Rick watching his wife and daughter be gunned down, Billy/Ben, situations like that (and the zombies) are why I read the Walking Dead. Even when the comic stretched the realism in the past with parts of the Gov and No Way Out arcs it still all seemed plausible. That's my biggest complaint, my only complaint really, is that RK seems to have forsaken realism for Hollywood bullshit.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I'm very, very worried for the end of the war, as I seriously cannot imagine it being resolved in a way that feels like TWD - that is, gritty, realistic and HEAAAVVYY. By this point, there are very few options left for Kirkman to deliver the deaths we've been expecting for a long time in a manner that is convincing and satisfying. I hope these last two issues aren't simply jam-packed with major character deaths; that felt natural in the prison arc because of the nature of the conflict, but the way AOW has unfolded has, to me, felt pretty contrived and alternately too predictable to be excited about and too ridiculous to take seriously. You're totally right about the issue of plausibility - too many implausible things have happened leading up to/during the war. When the Alexandrians had their guns shot out of their hands, I screamed at the page. Obviously, Kirkman needed Negan to learn of Rick's intentions and gain the upper hand while revealing his meticulous planning by the end of that issue, and there was a way to organise that series of events in a believable way. Instead he opted for the one that trolled us AND stretched our suspension of disbelief to breaking point simply to progress the narrative to where he wanted it to be. The writing's simply lazier than it used to be.