I like zombies. No, I take that back. I frickin’ love zombies. Ever since I was nine, when I saw George A. Romero’s 1968 black and white cult classic “Night of the Living Dead,” on my uncle’s tiny TV, I’ve been hooked (By the way, all of Romero’s zombie flicks are great, even the remakes). I mean, the best Christmas present I have ever received was the “Zombie Survival Guide” by Max Brooks, which changed my life on more than one account. Also, I’m also pretty frickin’ obsessed with comics. So could there possibly be a better way for me to revel in my nerdiness than the wonderful comic series by Robert Kirkman, “The Walking Dead?” Nope.
Now, before delving into this wonderful comic, I must say a few words on zombies. There are a lot of different schools of zombie thought out there, some very narrow and others that are more inclusive. However, through all of these there run a few common trends:
A zombie is a re-animated corpse, which by some process has regained some of its bodily functions after dying, namely, the basic use of its brain and muscles.
Zombies have a primal function to feed on the flesh of the living.
To kill a zombie, one needs to destroy its brain.
I make this point here to distinguish certain books or movies that play with zombie themes, but do not actually involve zombies, such as “28 Days Later” (which is a great movie, but the creatures in the movie are not zombies, but rather crazies, in that they did not die and come back to life, but rather are infected with a virus, called rage, that makes them, well, crazy. And they starve too. Didn’t you people see the end of that movie? Dead bodies don’t starve).
Anyway, back to the issue at hand: “The Walking Dead.” This book is awesome. It’s been going on for quite a few years now, with over 50 issues collected in eight trades. That’s a whole heck of a lot of zombies, considering how a lot of horror comics don’t often work out so well. Now, we must ask, why do so many people love this comic?
To start answering this question, Kirkman is a great writer. For any piece of genre fiction to be truly worthwhile, except for a certain niche of dorks, it has to transcend those genre boundaries by actually talking about something that relates to a little piece in all of us. “The Walking Dead” is unlike many other horror stories in that the background of the story are zombies, through and through, but more importantly the story is about the living, the survivors of this terrible post-apocalyptic world and how they now must act to merely survive even one more day. Kirkman makes no qualms about screwing with his characters- physically or emotionally. No character is really safe in this comic.
To put even more icing on the cake, this comic is chock full of brain-destroying action. It would seem that there are only so many ways to kill a zombie, and that it would eventually become trite or banal after so many zombie heads have exploded from a well-placed shotgun blast, but you know, I still have no complaints except that new issues only come out once a month.
I know that deep down we all would like nothing more than to fight off a horde of zombies, armed with nothing more than a shotgun, a few shells and our wits. But failing that, I guess you could just go read “The Walking Dead,” which is probably the closest thing we could come to that dream. My suggestion would be to start with the first trade, “Days Gone By,” and if you don’t enjoy that, then obviously there is something seriously wrong with you.