A Look At The Walking Dead Stories Coming To TV
The enticing $1 "What's Next" series from DC is an exemplary promotional tool that got me into The Walking Dead series. A single dollar investment that led to a frantic search for the collected editions and gave me a new series to get excited about. It's a simple rule; You advertise a good product, people will line up for the real deal. What follows are my own mini-promotions, the working elements that bought my interest as a reader and have me awaiting the AMC series with great expectations, all spoiler-free.
Right off the bat, The Walking Dead sells itself as a comic that capitalizes on the monochrome artwork. There's a whole sense of grey throughout the comic, in its characters' motivations and in the decay of the world around them. The pencilling follows a formula of talking heads interupted by zombie swarm action, keeping a fair balance. The survivors' faces are easily distinguishable but get tired after multiple appearances per page. The zombies, on the other hand, really pepper up the art, as an attack will often inspire a more inventive camera or at least warrants the appearance of tendons and loose eyeballs.
Volumes 1 & 2 go through characters with fluidity, acting as a nice reminder that amid all the drama, something, a plot with weight, is rolling along stealthily before you. As a protagonist, Rick's experiences are an excellent vantage point for observing the character development that occurs within the camp. Though the characters are well-fleshed out, their treatment often falls back on tired comic-book laws of pacing: Characters who are shot but not proclaimed dead by the end of the issue will survive; If you haven't seen a lot of someone recently, the book is patiently waiting to reveal their arc later on. It'll be curious to see how the TV adaptation juggles its cast, and how much of it is centered around Rick/Lori/Carl, as I find them the least interesting grouping in the book.
Reading The Walking Dead, each volume in one sitting, cemented my appreciation for the story. It reads quickly, with panels which frequently opt to depict stunned silence as dialogue in ellipses, wanting you to absorb the scrathy landscapes before cutting to another piece of post-apocalyptic survival drama. Detatched scenes are strung together to make this general statement about the very human duress that a scenario like this calls for, sometimes hopeful and other times realistically pessimistic. It reminds me of Cameron Stewart's webcomic Sin Titulo in terms of pacing and evocativeness, the way it often stresses this sense of lonliness. It's a fine read that avoids getting lost in the precedent of the genre, an aspect that I fear the TV show will have to acknowledge. I've found that most of what I love about this comic comes from its presentation as a comic, so I'll likely be hard to impress once the pilot rolls out this Halloween.
Rubber Justice
Posted to Review on 26 August 2010
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Other stuff like this: AMC, horror, television, the walking dead, Whats Next, zombies
Love, love, love this comic. I am extremely scared-excited about the TV adaptation. Kirkman's heavy involvement is encouraging, but I still am not sure comics can be translated into dynamic media terribly effectively. I am super-stoked and tremulous.