The Walking Dead #105 is a real eye-opener. Originally printed in 2012, it’s the first issue to go inside the Sanctuary, a former steel mill converted into a base for Negan’s Saviors. Just issues after bashing in Glenn’s brains with his barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat, a cordial Negan takes Carl Grimes on a tour of the Sanctuary and introduces the boy to his harem of lingerie-clad wives. Negan then forces Carl to remove the bandage covering his missing eye, makes him sing a song while menacing him with his bat Lucille, and has Carl watch as he maims an insubordinate Savior with a scalding hot iron.

It’s shown that Negan coerces women into being his “wives” rather than have them work for points to survive like the rest of the Saviors. “When I choose a new wife, the process is completely voluntary,” Negan explains. “It’s an honor to be with me, to no longer have to trade points to trade for goods and services. But it comes with a price: total devotion. And that can sometimes be a hard pill for others to swallow. But swallow it they must… or it’s the iron for you.”


 

When Negan’s “wife” Amber is caught with her former boyfriend Mark, he provokes Negan’s ire — and his iron.

Negan reminds Amber that her position is “completely voluntary,” telling the crying girl, “I don’t want anyone here if they don’t want to be.” But if Amber leaves him for Mark, Negan warns, “You’ll forfeit your privileges and go back to whatever job you had before Sherry brought you to us, but you can.”

What she can’t do, he screams, is cheat on him. “So what’s it going to be? You going back to Mark? Back to earning points? Working for your supper? Or are you staying?” A sobbing Amber is bullied into staying and Mark is scarred publicly to “forever bear the shame of his actions on his face.”

“I’d say more than anything else, at least on social media, the harem became one of the most controversial aspects of this comic,” Kirkman writes in the colorized reprint version of The Walking Dead Deluxe #105. “Even more than some of the upcoming bits with The Whisperers, which always surprised me. I certainly have a line I won’t cross. No pun intended.”

“You can look to Garth Ennis’ Crossed series to see a far more brutal and unforgiving exploration of the apocalypse,” Kirkman continued, referring to the comic that depicts graphic acts of stomach-turning depravity. “The Walking Dead is EXTREMELY tame by comparison, but that was by design. The harsh elements that did make it in, I always tried to make sure they were a reflection of life. I’d always argue no matter how dark things got in this series, you could always pick up a newspaper and read far more gruesome things happening for real.”

“The world is a dark place, and I didn’t want to shy away from portraying that for fear of offending anyone,” Kirkman concluded.

The Walking Dead Deluxe #105 is on sale now from Image Comics.