This special Walking Dead issue contains THE WALKING DEAD 27, featuring the first appearance of The Governor, as well as the Governor origin story that first appeared in the CBLDF LIBERTY ANNUAL 2012. Find out the origins of the villain.

After a devastating act of war by the Whisperers, Rick must chart a path for his community. But when his leadership is questioned, how will he respond?

Welcome to Woodbury, home to THE WALKING DEAD’s most heinous villain… The Governor.

In the last volume we learned that no one is safe. Now after the staggering losses they've sustained, Rick and Carl are left to pick up the pieces and carry on... knowing that they could join their fallen friends and family at any moment. Collects issues 49-54.

The Walking Dead Compendium is here! Since 2003, Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead has been redefining the survival horror genre with its unique and vivid account of life after the end of the world. Although the cast is diverse and often changing (including, of course, a great number of zombies), at the heart of every tale is Rick Grimes: former police officer, husband, father, and de facto leader of a ragtag band of survivors looking to make a future for themselves in a world that no longer has one. To call The Walking Dead a zombie tale is accurate to a point, but it touches on only one facet of a story that asks timeless questions about what it means to live. It also asks whether or not this is possible in a world full of the dead. This is a great opportunity to experience this gripping read for the first time or catch up on the tale with the first four years worth of material, collected in one volume for the first time. The first eight volumes of this fan-favorite series collected into one massive collection. This volume collects THE WALKING DEAD #1-48.

In this volume of the NYT bestselling survival horror, Rick and his band of survivors work to build a larger network of thriving communities, and soon discover that Negan's 'Saviors' prove to be a larger threat than they could have fathomed. Crossing Negan will lead to serious, dire consequences for the group; it seems that for the first time since the Governor's reign of terror that Rick may have Something to Fear. Collects THE WALKING DEAD 97-102

Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead: Search and Destroy! The latest in Jay Bonansinga's New York Times bestselling series! What could possibly go wrong? For one brief moment, it seems Lilly and her plague-weary band of survivors might just engineer a better tomorrow. Banding together with other small town settlements, they begin a massive project to refurbish the railroad between Woodbury and Atlanta. The safer travel will begin a new post-apocalyptic era of trade, progress, and democracy. Little do they know, however, that trouble is brewing back home ... Out of nowhere, a brutal new faction has attacked Woodbury while Lilly and the others have been off repairing the railroad. Now the barricades are burning. Adults have been murdered, children kidnapped. But why? Why subject innocent survivors to such a random, unprovoked assault? Lilly Caul and her ragtag posse of rescuers will soon discover the chilling answers to these questions and more as they launch a desperate mission to save the kidnapped children. But along the way, the dark odyssey will take them into a nightmarish series of traps and hellish encounters with incomprehensible swarms of undead. And as always, in the world of the Walking Dead, the walkers will prove to be the least of Lilly’s problems. It’s what the human adversaries have in store for her that will provide Lilly’s greatest challenge yet.

Written by Jay Bonansinga, based on the original series created by Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead: Descent follows the events of The Fall of the Governor, and Lilly Caul's struggles to rebuild Woodbury after the Governor's shocking demise. Out of the ashes of its dark past, Woodbury, Georgia, becomes an oasis of safety amidst the plague of the walking dead – a town reborn in the wake of its former tyrannical leader, Philip Blake, aka The Governor. Blake's legacy of madness haunts every nook and cranny of this little walled community, but Lilly Caul and a small ragtag band of survivors are determined to overcome their traumatic past... despite the fact that a super-herd is closing in on them. This vast stampede of zombies, driven by inexorable hunger and aimed directly at Woodbury, becomes their first true test. But Lilly and company refuse to succumb, and in a stunning counteroffensive, the beleaguered townspeople save themselves by joining forces with a mysterious religious sect fresh from the wilderness. Led by an enigmatic preacher named Jeremiah, this rogue church group seems tailor made for Woodbury and Lilly's dream of a democratic, family-friendly future. The two factions meld into one, the town prospers, and everything seems hopeful for the first time since the plague broke out. But things – especially in the world of the walking dead – are often not what they seem. Jeremiah and his followers harbor a dark secret, the evidence of which very gradually begins to unravel. Along with a popular TV show also based on Kirkman's AMC comic books, The Walking Dead franchise is just getting better and better with Bonansinga's newest novel. In a stunning and horrifying finale, the world for Lilly and her close friends is turned upside down, and it is solely up to Lilly Caul to cleanse the town once and for all of its poisonous fate. These novels continue to be a great companion for fans of the television series and graphic novels!

What level of threat do the Whisperers pose to the communities' safety? Carl's not waiting around to find out. Also, the return of Michonne.

The zombie has cropped up in many forms—in film, in television, and as a cultural phenomenon in zombie walks and zombie awareness months—but few books have looked at what the zombie means in fiction. Tim Lanzendörfer fills this gap by looking at a number of zombie novels, short stories, and comics, and probing what the zombie represents in contemporary literature. Lanzendörfer brings together the most recent critical discussion of zombies and applies it to a selection of key texts including Max Brooks’s World War Z, Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, Junot Díaz’s short story “Monstro,” Robert Kirkman’s comic series The Walking Dead, and Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Within the context of broader literary culture, Lanzendörfer makes the case for reading these texts with care and openness in their own right. Lanzendörfer contends that what zombies do is less important than what becomes possible when they are around. Indeed, they seem less interesting as metaphors for the various ways the world could end than they do as vehicles for how the world might exist in a different and often better form.