Scott Carelli loves comics and other geek-related stuff. He talks about it weekly on his podcasts Two Geeks a Mic and a Podcast and True Believers on Geekshow.us. He also created and produces an audio series called Geek by Night also on Geekshow.us. Check them out!

 

After two comic reviews for series heavy in supernatural elements (Preacher, Lucifer), I thought the best choice would be to review a comic that’s much more realistic and profound. The kind of story filled with thought provoking social commentary that causes you to question the very fabric that makes up our society. Something that is so somber and disheartening that you’ll never look at humanity the same way again. Naturally, only one subject immediately came to mind: Zombies.

Yes, you read that right. Zombies, when used correctly, should make you see humanity in a different light. It might not be pretty, but it’s real and it’s honest. The best zombie stories aren’t about the living dead, but instead use that as the setting for a story about people and how they live and deal with an impossible situation. Not since Romero have zombies been used this well. Not until The Walking Dead.

Created by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore, The Walking Dead chronicles the life of police officer Rick Grimes as he wakes up from a coma to a world he doesn’t recognize. He later happens upon a group of fellow survivors and the series continues to follow these characters as they live and die in a world overrun with the living dead. 

The most important thing to note about this series is its realistic approach to the situation they suddenly find themselves in. The circumstances might not be realistic, but the reaction the characters have to it certainly is. A zombie apocalypse is the ultimate extreme situation. I’m not sure that it can really get any worse than that. What Kirkman does here, though, is gives us a natural progression of events that are completely believable. This is what a zombie outbreak would be like to live through. This is how your friends and neighbors would change in reaction to the new world order. It’s the kind of story that makes you seriously reflect on yourself as you wonder what you would do in their situation. It’s really fascinating stuff.

The characters themselves are eerily real. Not only in believability, but I sincerely feel that I’ve met them all before. I’ve passed them on the street, sat next to them at the movie theater, stood behind them in line at McDonalds. They feel like real people. So whenever one of them dies it always grabs you, and I find myself reacting to it in a similar way that I would in reality. It’s usually sudden and really shocking at first, and then it’s sad as it begins to sink it. Death is something that is dealt with very effectively in this series, and it’s dealt with often. If there’s one thing that I want to stress more than anything about this series it’s one simple fact:

No one is safe.

It doesn’t matter who they are. Whether it’s the new character that’s just shown up, the mother of two kids that’s been there since issue two, the main character, or even a newborn infant, no one, I mean no one is safe. And they know it. As you read the series you’ll see how the characters’ hope of survival or salvation is slowly depleted to nothing. They know they’re going to die. It’s not a matter of if anymore, it’s just a matter of when and how. That knowledge within each character grows and intensifies with every issue. You can hear it in the dialogue and you can see it in the artwork.

The artwork in this series is what paints the picture of this world for me so well. While Tony Moore is undoubtedly a fantastic talent, it wasn’t until artist Charlie Adlard came on board with issue 7 that the series really came into its own. Adlard brought the gritty realism that was lacking from Moore’s initial six issues. When Adlard started on the book, I’ll be honest; I didn’t even notice the change. That’s not to say that Moore and Adlard have even remotely similar styles, it’s just that his artwork worked so well with this story that I never questioned it. I think this was always meant to be Adlard’s book, and Moore was just holding his spot.

The choice to color the series with gray tones is an interesting one. One would think that having such a realistic story to tell, Kirkman and Moore would have chosen to do the book in color, after all, that’s how we see the real world. But, this is a series about shades of gray, and I think that the decision to do the book in black and white has a lot to do with that. I don’t think that the characters see the world in color anymore. That’s not the world they live in. Their world is dark and dank and dismal. It’s like a gloomy day that never lets up. 

The Walking Dead continues to be a favorite of mine, month in and month out, and I think that there’s something in this book for everyone. You don’t even have to like the horror genre, because that’s not what this is. The title isn’t referencing the hoards of zombies that limp and moan their way through this series; it’s about the people, trying to survive each day knowing that death is all they have to look forward to in life. 

That’d be a tough world to live in, but it’s a fascinating one to read about.

NEXT TIME: Ex Machina