Zombie stories pretty much fall into two camps: satirical (think the recent Zombieland or Sean of the Dead for movies, or my most recent favorite computer game, Plants vs. Zombies) or scary. Robert Kirkman's long-running The Walking Dead comics series falls very squarely in the latter category.
I picked up the first compendium of The Walking Dead earlier this year--it's comprised of the first 8 trade paper backs, or the first 48 issues, of the series. It starts off almost identically to one of my favorite recent zombie flicks, Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. A dude, our "hero", a townie cop, wakes up from a coma to find the hospital empty. He eventually makes it outside to find that the town is a wasteland and the walking dead (only much later are they actually referred to as zombies) are everywhere.
Eventually he finds living people, including his family, which is probably the least likely plot development the story offers up. From there, the tried and true zombie tropes are trotted out. The zombies can only be killed by a head shot (or ax, or hammer, or ninja sword...whatever). People think the government will eventually come to the rescue. And most importantly, the survivors should be more afraid of each other than the actual zombies.
There's not a whole lot of new territory here in terms of the zombie mythology, but since it is an exceptionally long series, we're allowed to observe and get to know the well-written characters far better than one can in a 90 minute movie. As long as you don't actually get attached to any characters. This is very much an anyone-can-die-at-any-moment kind of series. Like the superb Y the Last Man, there's also a lot more thought put into the plot and the circumstances. Besides just murder and mayhem, the series is very much a thought experiment. Kirkman has clearly put some effort into imagining what the world would actually be like if the dead came back to life.
The black and white illustrations, primarily by Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn, are well paired with this level of story telling. The violence is graphically depicted, but they're not really going for the gross-out factor. Yes, a person's neck is bitten, but we're not seeing veins and gore squirting everywhere. It's gross, but not too gross.
I can really only read this book one chapter at a time, with good breaks in between. It's a compelling story, but relentlessly grim. There's not a word of comic relief, nor should there be here. Kirkman chose his tone early on and he's remained consistent. But really, when nothing every good happens to anyone, ever, it gets more than a little depressing if you read too much at once. Still, zombies are pretty cool, and this whip-smart series is worth the occassional visit to get that zombie fix we all desire.
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