“Let’s talk about Negan and The Governor.
I think the most realistic slam on the book is that Negan is Governor Part 2, and I think he feels more that way in the show than in the comics because of the casting. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is older than I pictured Negan.
See, I think the comic gives us Negan as a hardcore Flash Thompson, a high school bully who was living in a world where being a high school bully was actually a desirable trait because it was useful.
He’s fucking nuts, but because that allows him to never be attached to anyone, and because he thrives on chaos, he’s uniquely suited to live in the new world. He’s smarter than he first comes off, but he’s not much of a planner. And while that’s the perfect way to survive in the beginning, once he comes up against a more organized group, he’s doomed.
I don’t know if the Governor is as crazy as he is malicious. I think the difference in rape-y-ness between Negan and the Governor is a good illustration. The Governor just seems evil, Negan seems like he’s bad, but perhaps only because being bad has allowed him to survive so long. I think Negan tells himself he’s hurting people because it’s necessary, where the Governor hurts people because he enjoys it. I think Negan takes some joy in hurting people, too, but I think that’s because hurting people is one of very few tools he’s got in his toolbox. I think if there were another way that was as simple and effective…maybe things would be different. But maybe he wouldn’t have made it.
Another big difference is that The Governor is secretly evil, the Woodbury residents don’t know the extent of things, and Negan is completely upfront about his ways.
I think the biggest difference is that The Governor is predictable, Negan is not.
In I Wear The Black Hat Chuck Klosterman comes up with a pretty useful definition of evil: What makes a person evil is knowing the most and caring the least.
The Governor and Negan split those two qualities.
The Governor knows the most, for sure. But Negan certainly cares the least.
And on the other side of things, Negan does not know the most, and the Governor doesn’t care the least.
So: who’s more evil?
I think it’s probably pretty close to a dead-nuts tie.
The Governor is super evil, and he does a lot of despicable things.
Negan is incredibly destructive, and although his evil-o-meter reading might be lower than the Governor’s, I think his particular evil harmed a larger number of people.
However, I think the Governor took an evil turn that was unnecessary, and pretty early on in the whole apocalypse, and that makes him seem more evil. Remember, at that point, it was pretty fucked up that Rick shot someone who was absolutely threatening the group. Where Negan’s evil seems to be one of only a few ways to survive, The Governor’s evil seems like a choice.
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Where some people see Negan as Governor 2 (and I admit, I did at first, too) I see it differently now.
As The Walking Dead moves through time, the groups get sharper and sharper. What we see with Negan is a sharper, better governor, and that makes sense. That’s why he survived longer than the Governor. He didn’t do stupid shit like raping captives from other groups, driving a tank into battle that nobody really knew how to use, and basically waiting until a pivotal moment to reveal to his people that he’s a cruel beast of a person.
The Rick Grimes of Issue 10 would not survive the events of Issue 50. He had to go through a lot to get where he is, and he honed the tools to survive.
Negan is, in my opinion, the Governor after some serious honing. We didn’t witness Negan’s process, but we can imagine it, and I think that’s useful world-building.
And Negan’s real purpose is to ask a question in the book: Can good people survive, or will the Negans be the only survivors in the end? Is altruism and goodness a liability in this situation?
Where the Governor is mostly a simple antagonist, evil for no real reason, and not made that way, not honed by necessity, Negan is the question of what it’s going to take to survive. “