Great Character Introductions on The Walking Dead: Abraham’s Army
By Susie Graham
We only meet a character once. Sometimes that introduction is just woven into the story. Other times it’s a dramatic event. Let’s look at some of the great introductions on The Walking Dead.
Abraham’s Army. Abraham Ford. Rosita Espinosa. Eugene Porter. Here we meet 3 characters at once. Three first impressions. Abraham is the dominant character and impression. We get an impression before they even speak. We refer to them as Abe’s army because there’s a definite military vibe to them.
Abraham and Rosita are in olive-green and camouflage. They’ve adjusted the nature of the “uniforms” to the heat and the unofficial status of the zombie apocalypse.
Eugene has his very tightly cropped mullet and shorts. He seems a little less connected to Abe and Rosita in dress and manner. We won’t learn much about Rosita in her introduction from her words, but her appearance makes quite an impression!
Check out their first quick appearance here:
Abraham has a military air about him and a bossy personality from the get go. He uses the tough love military motivational strategy manual on Glenn but Glenn wasn’t falling for it. Glenn had neither enlisted nor been drafted into Abraham’s army.
As non comic readers, we were on guard as to whether these people were friends or not. We don’t trust people. And Abraham seemed so bossy, yet they seemed to want Glenn and Tara to join them so they were at their mercy in some ways even though Abraham used his bully tactics.
Related Story: Season 6 finale: Abraham hugs Eugene
Tara was loyal to Glenn and Glenn was loyal to his mission to find Maggie so Abraham’s gung-ho, go, go, go mission to save the world in a world that had already gone to hell really wasn’t selling it to the two new pals.
It’s classified.
The loveable speech eccentricities of both Abraham and Eugene are evident right from the start as well. We find out quite a bit in our first meeting. Eugene is inept with walkers and Abraham completely believes in this mission to get him to Washington D.C.
Well, I’m the luckiest guy in the world.
Eugene may be irritating later with his mantra that he is smarter than everyone else, but Abraham is just as steady with his mindset that what he is doing by getting Eugene to D.C. is just more important than anything anybody else is doing.
We get to hear Eugene say, “It’s classified,” for the first time!
Oh, honey, look at you. You’re a damn mess.
Abraham’s army is a great introduction visually, story wise, and character wise. In a short time, we learn quite a bit about this trio of newbie characters that turns out to be pretty accurate information as the story continues.
Next: Great introductions to characters:The Andersons
It’s a very straightforward introduction. We get clues from their method of transportation, their dress and appearance, their speech patterns and vocabulary and the information that Abraham gives us directly about the mission and the muckety mucks in Washington.
Abrahams Army is the Blues Brothers of the apocalypse: “We’re on a mission from God”