The Walking Dead

#1-193

Image Comics

My previous longest-read-comic-series was “East of West” at 45 issues.

“The Walking Dead’s” complete run laps that a few times.

Yes, yes, it’s just zombie soap opera, but I still love it. I don’t recall how I first starting watching the AMC series a few years back. I usually avoid zombie or vampire or horror as a genre in general. It’s just not my jam. A few expections: “I am Legend” by Richard Matheson, “The Stand” by Stephen King, and “Zone One” by Colson Whitehead — all of which are more than just gore fests. I was surprised how good the first couple seasons of The Walking Dead were.

I saw a used copy of “The Walking Dead” comic at Bookish in East Atlanta Village a couple weeks ago and went for it. I had never checked out the comic before and found the show and comic matched up pretty close and then it didn’t — in significant ways. There are characters and plot lines in the show that never appear in the comics at all. It’s a rare example of a show building on and improving a book, counter to most terrible movies based on great books.

So, why should you invest — at least — the time to read this series, let alone the cost?

Charlie Adlard’s art work gets stronger as the run went on, which makes sense. You draw the same characters over and over, you better get good at it. Rick’s character in the first few comics almost looks like a different artist drew him. Anyways. I like the black and white artwork and it gives me hope that non-color filled comics can do well.

“The Walking Dead” series shows people searching for a safe place to land. A cycle of emergency, flight, shelter and collapse repeats itself for the entire comic run. Once they find it, make it better, prepare to stay, they get ripped away from it. Home is always temporary, always destroyed from the outside, destroyed by the living and dead, fleeting.

Death is constant in this run. It would feel like something was missing if a major character wasn’t killed every few chapters. There is a real sense of sadness in this story. I don’t find this a reason to avoid the series — the opposite in fact. It feels like real sacrifice is required to survey in this apocalyptic world.

We see a range of community types: dictatorships, communes, caste, democratic, feudal, cannibalistic, and animalistic. The series poses the question: which of these the best way to live, the fairest? Or, should we even live with other’s at all?

We see children grow up into adulthood in a world full of war, death, starvation, and hardship, which, to no surprise, creates some pretty warped children.

One of my favorite moments from the series deals with redemption. Can someone be redeemed? Can evil get a second chance? The series has plenty of villains and antagonists — most of whom are killed in due time. However, one villain goes from killing main characters to gaining my sympathy by the end of the comic’s run. I love how unexpected this was. It’s way easier to kill off enemies than to give them time to change. I think you’ll find this interesting as well.

Finally, the characters all want something here. Kurt Vonnegut’s classic adage comes to mind: if nothing else, make your characters want a glass of water. I wanted to know more about the characters here. From Rick to Andrea to Abraham to Michonne and Negan…there was always a character you thought you got and them bam, you would see them in a new light, with new back story.

Oh, and they kill a lot of zombies too.