Celebrating The Walking Dead #150 with Five of the Comic’s Most Shocking Moments

The Walking Dead comic series is best known for its endless supply of shocking moments and gruesome deaths over its 150 issue run.While the comic has cycled through plenty of locales and unforgettable characters over the last twelve years, it’s always adhered to an important golden rule: “No one is safe.”ComicBook.com previously discussed why The Walking Dead #150 was important to both the comic series and the industry in general, but what better way to celebrate the comic’s latest milestone than by running through some of the series most shocking scenes:

Carl Shoots Shane

One of the first defining moments in the comic series, The Walking Dead set the tone early when Carl shot Shane way back in issue #6.  While Shane was initially happy to see his best friend alive during the zombie outbreak, he realizes that Rick’s return means the end of his brief “relationship” with Lori and his surrogate father role with Carl.  After showing several hints of jealousy during the opening arc, Shane takes Rick into the woods to “go hunting”, but quickly reveals it was all a ruse to murder Rick.  Unfortunately for Shane, Carl followed the pair and shoots Shane in the neck before he can harm his father.  Shane’s death started Carl on a dark road, one filled with much more killing and an increasingly bleak and emotionless outlook on life. 

Rick Loses a Hand

The Governor was the first real long term antagonist in The Walking Dead, plaguing Rick and his group of survivors for nearly 20 issues.  The Governor made quite an impression of Rick during their first encounter, leaving the ex-sheriff a little shorthanded…literally. After capturing Rick, Michonne and Glenn, the Governor asserted his authority by cutting off Rick’s hand with a machete and torturing Michonne and Glenn.  The Governor let Rick and the others live, hoping to get information out of the three, but the mistake proved costly when Rick and the others escaped and prepared their friends for the Governor’s inevitable attack.  

Dale Gets Eaten…By Humans

One of the most beloved characters in The Walking Dead was Dale, the calm-headed moral center of the Atlanta survivors.  Often seen as the voice of reason through the first several arcs of the series, Dale formed a surrogate family with Andrea and two twin boys the pair had “adopted” as their own.  After escaping the Governor’s massacre at the prison, Dale and the rest of the group eventually head for DC at the urging of Abraham and Eugene, who claimed that they could find a cure to the zombie outbreak at the nation’s capital.  However, Dale and his surrogate family never makes it to DC.  After Ben went insane and killed Billy, and Carl killed Ben in retribution, Dale let his defenses down and got bitten by a walker.  If that weren’t bad enough, he then found himself at the mercy of the Hunters, a group of cannibals who had stalked the group for several issues.  After the Hunters ate part of his leg, Dale got the final laugh by revealing his walker wound to the Hunters, which ended their impromptu meal in a hurry.  Rick and his friends rescued Dale shortly before he died, allowing him to spend his final moments with Andrea before he passed away.  

Carl Loses an Eye

While Rick Grimes is the main character of The Walking Dead, no character has experienced more of a transformation than his son Carl.  After losing his mother, sister and innocence over the course of the first 80 issues, Carl experienced another major blow when he lost his eye during a Walker attack in Alexandria.  Douglas, the former leader of Alexandria, accidentally shot Carl while committing a “suicide via walker” by rushing into a walker horde while wildly firing a gun.  Carl survived the injury, but it left him with memory loss and a much bleaker and darker outlook on the world (as if that were possible).   

Glenn Meets Lucille

The Walking Dead #100 marked the first appearance for Negan, The Walking Dead‘s longest running antagonist, as well as the final appearance of one of its most popular characters.  After capturing Rick and most of the series’ other main characters, Negan introduced himself as the leader of the Saviors and proclaimed he now owned everything that belonged to Alexandria.  Before Rick or his friends could protest, Negan introduced the group to Lucille, a baseball bat covered in barbed wire.  To prove he was in control, Negan picked out Glenn at random and gruesomely beat him to death, leaving his friends to mourn him while proclaiming he’d be back in a week for Alexandria’s supplies.

Negan’s brutal murder of Glenn marked the beginning of a testy and hostile rivalry between him and Rick, one that continues into the current arc of The Walking Dead.