Thursday, August 4, 2016

The Walking Dead, Vol. 01: Days Gone By

Last semester at my college, I took a Zombies honors course from my English department, and one of the requirements was to watch the first two seasons of The Walking Dead. Of course I couldn't stop there, so I watched the other seasons as well and am currently waiting for the next one to come out. (Comment your theories about the finale below!)

I've been interning at my town's library this summer and while there are lots of things to do, there are also many times when I have nothing really to do, so I have started going through the comic books.



This comic wasn't bad, but I think it went WAY too fast. Compared to the show, the first volume is basically all of Season 1, plus an event or two from later seasons that happen as well. There is not much time for character development, especially with three of the main characters already dead by the end of the book.
The entire series is told from Rick's point of view, so we won't get to see anything like Morgan almost shooting his dead wife or things like that. Rick is the only character we know anything about, really, and we don't know that much. Some facts, but personality-wise, we know next to nothing.
By the end of Volume 1, ***SPOILER*** Amy, Jim, and Shane are already dead. ***END SPOILER*** We don't really get to see much of Amy and Andrea's relationship, and we don't see Shane's character development and his decent into madness. In the comic, Carol's husband has died already and there are quite a few characters in the camp that were not in the show...and we still don't really know anything about them. Meryl isn't in the story causing problems, and, as most people know, neither is Daryl. Rick teaches everyone in the camp to use a gun right off the bat, so we don't see much of the fight between Rick and Lori about Carl learning to shoot, and we don't see Andrea's development into a stronger character.
One thing I do like about this version is that there aren't any characters playing the race card. In the show, we saw the conflict between Meryl and T-Dog mostly due to racism, but since neither of them are in the comics, and everyone in the camp is white (Glenn being Asian-American). Though the fact that there aren't any black characters in the camp might be another issue, we don't have the discrimination or superiority that we have to deal with in the show. While this can be an important issue to address, I think it can also detract from the story, and in this situation, I am glad it was not included.

As of right now, I do plan on continuing the series...when I can find volume 2...someone has it out from the library right now...


To watch AMC's The Walking Dead, visit their website or Netflix. Or check your local library or bookstore for the DVD collections.