Tag Archives: walking dead

The Walking Dead comics

The Family is Back together

I’ve just finished blitzing my way through hundreds of pages of the Walking Dead comic. It has been amazing, so far, not something I expected to say about anything involving zombies.

Unlike the movie/zombie convention, the comic serial has enough time to explore some fascinating issues. The nature of what it is to be human; to have humanity, of what you’d do to protect family, to survive in extreme circumstances. On the source of strength; on leadership, on psychological trauma and mental instability; on social dynamics and societal constraints.

It’s a rich, rich vein of possibility that is amazingly well executed, and which I think perhaps could only have worked in this specific medium (I’m not sure how well this will translate to TV unless they can miraculously stay on the air for 3-4 years).

I am looking forward to the introduction of Michone on the TV series, if that happens anytime soon. Simply fantastic.

The Walking Dead graphic novel–light bedtime reading

Walking Dead compendium vol 1The Walking Dead compendium arrived yesterday – a chunky tome, as you can see. On reflection, it perhaps wasn’t the best choice for bedtime reading – it’s both scary and hard to put down – but I think on the whole, that’s a better option than trying to lug it on the commute.

So far, I’m more or less caught up with the first season of the AMC drama. It’s amazing how the TV show has borrowed from the visual stylings of the graphic novel in such incredible detail, and yet picked its own plot points to expand upon and create for the purposes of a televisual interpretation.

Patrick tells me that they’re struggling to get the second season made, as managing zombie mayhem at that scale is just expensive by way of SFX and make-up. I hope it does get through.

The Walking Dead

THE WALKIN DEAD serie 2 dvdsMy brother introduced me, via iTunes, to AMC’s The Walking Dead – a 28-days-later style post-apocalyptic Zombie tv-series set in the American South – near the city of Atlanta. I’ve never really been one for horror – my cousins Rey and Anand used to lap this stuff up as kids, but I somehow never took great joy in being scared – amazed and amused were more my preference.

But the Walking Dead is very, very good television indeed. Whilst the characteristics of the zombies and the conventions of the genre are left undisturbed and ordinary, where it excels – as ArvD pointed out to me – is in the depth of the characters it manages to get across so rapidly. I’m only three episodes in but already have an excellent sense of half a dozen major protagonists.

For those curious, small-town sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) wakes up in hospital following a car chase and a shootout that sees him badly injured. He’s been out of it for several weeks and in the meantime pretty much everyone in town has either been killed, zombiefied or both. Unable to find his kids, with the help of a couple of other survivors, he raids the police station for supplies and heads to nearby Atlanta, where reports say there is a camp of survivors, in the hope of finding his missing wife and son.

It kinds of goes from there.

Really high production values, incredible performances, and very tight writing – incorporating some brave silences for mainstream TV-writing – has seen this renewed for a second season. Andrew Lincoln’s accent (he’s British playing Southern) is flawless.

I’m going to have to find gaps when Amanda isn’t around to watch it, as I don’t see her being sold on the genre regardless of the quality of the writing… there is a high level of gore involved.

Trailer: