by: Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn
Collects: The Walking Dead #1-30.
Premise: An apocalyptic zombie epidemic has swept the area, or the nation, maybe even the globe. Nobody knows how far and wide this epidemic reaches, why it started, or how to even stop it. This series follows a small band of survivors as they deal with the changing world around them. As the tag-line reads: "In a world of the dead, we are forced to finally start living."
Review:
It's kind of ironic that my first review would be from my least favorite genres of entertainment: horror. Don't misunderstand me I don't hate the horror genre like, say, the romantic comedy. For my life term, I never really jived with horror, in the 80's we had the new age monsters with Freddy, Jason, and Michael. Sure I was scared of Freddy when I was younger but now Freddy does nothing for me. In the 90's we had the suburban horror, with Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, again I may thought the original scream was fun because it was clever, but it did not really stay with me as a classic. With the rather recent invention of the Saw and Hostel franchises, we saw the creation of torture porn. Also much of the horror genre followed suit by turning up the blood and guts quotients. It's cheap and I hate it. The horror that always spoke to me was psychological horror, the fear of the unknown, or the most fearful thing of all: human beings. Movies like Alien, The Thing, and the one I watched very recently The Mist, really bring these themes to light, and subsequently wind up being my favorite horror films. What happens when your system breaks down, when things run amok, how do people react to things they don't know. Most of these films focus on tension, tension between people, build it up, until really the viewer can't take it any more.
Robert Kirkman follows suit in his series The Walking Dead. In the very first Trade paper-back volume, there's an introduction by Kirkman himself. In it, he states that he wanted The Walking Dead to be the never-ending zombie movie, it's essentially his mission statement. The Walking Dead is just that, it follows the main character Rick Grimes and his band of survivors as they deal with the changing world around them. Read that sentence again and you'll find the key to this story. It's not about how the survivors deal with the zombies, it's about how they deal with the world, and zombies are one piece that world.
Robert Kirkman hooks the reader with the zombies and keeps the readers with his engaging story on how society works and human beings attempt to rebuild society, reconstruct a new order. Kirkman leaves no stone unturned as he analyzes every institution ever built, with the organization of housing focused on in volume 2, the justice system getting a hard look in volume 3 and 4, the organization of love being the focus of volume 4, and the institution of family getting a good look throughout all 5 volumes. Kirkman keeps throwing obstacles and changing the situation enough so that the book never gets stale, and it certainly would without his effort. The book is about society more than it's about the zombies, or even about the individual characters.
Kirkman's individual characters are often his weakness and his strength. Kirkman takes a big risk in this series by having a rotating door of supporting characters. It keeps the tension high as the reader never knows who is going to be knocked off next. It's similar to a strategy used in the 24 television show. But it also inflates the cast at times, makes characters hard to remember, makes it hard to keep names straight, and most important makes the supporting characters hard to care about. Kirkman, defiantly, fights tooth and nail to make them fully fleshed out characters, or at the very least connectible and empathetic before they're killed off. He succeeds for the most part at making at the characters connectible, but rarely did I find them fully developed or naturally evolving.
The most development is saved for the psyche of his main character Rick, and Kirkman does a tremendous job with him, by essentially putting him through a gamut of terrible experiences. Kirkman's abuse of Rick is the best form of "torture porn" I've ever seen. In terms of character development, Kirkman eventually hits a tremendous stride in Volume 4 as many of the survivors have stayed on for a while, and rotating door closes somewhat.
More than creating characters, Kirkman's greatest achievement is an analysis at human nature, the human psyche, and the human beings as the real monster. Throughout all the volumes, it takes a front-seat to all the themes and Kirkman is able to explore it in all its forms with all it's characters. It's his master achievement in this book.
The art is in black and white. It's going to bug most people, just like it did me, but eventually I got used to it. Not only did I get used to it, as I continued reading, I applauded the decision, as it felt more and more appropriate. This is a bleak, dark book, and the color reflects that. The art is sufficient most times, occasionally the characters look too similar causing confusion for me, many of the female characters were indistinguishable. But again by Volume 4, these problems are accounted for. The strength of the art is often on grafting emotion on the characters' faces, it really helps portray the story they are trying to tell, essentially a human story.
Final Thoughts:
Kirkman takes an old hat strategy, old themes, and an old plot and reinvigorates it for a new audience. Kirkman explores themes and shows us how scary that world can be. Even with the larger picture being more gratifying than individual pieces, it's still a very satisfying read. I'd say pick it up.
Final Grade: 8.5/10
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