The Walking Dead Volume 1: Days Gone Bye

Vgc. Minimal signs of wear

Ask any given zombie fan what their favorite zombie flick is. Chances are they'll name something from the Romero catalogue. Ask the same zombie fan what their favorite zombie book is; if they have an answer at all, it'll probably be "The Walking Dead" DO NOT EXPECT A GOREFEST. Of course there is blood and violence. But that's not what's at the heart of this ongoing series. This black & white tale is totally character driven. You'll love some, and hate others, but regardless you'll always be sad to see them go. I laughed, I almost cried (if you have a wife and kids you'll understand) I flinched, I yelled into the pages. From soup to nuts, this series has got it all. Some interesting zombie ideas too(ie: they hunt by scent) If you call yourself a serious fan of the zombie sub-genre you need to own this. Hell, even people who aren't too crazy about zombies should own this. This isn't just a good zombie series It's good writing in general And (dare-I say) possibly the greatest piece of graphic literature put to paper. Long after you close the back-cover it'll stay with you. And trust me, you'll be buying the rest of them once you're done. MORAL OF THE STORY: Individuality is the only thing that separates us from the undead.

I was out of the comic book reading hobby for several years, but I have to say that I was glad that i came back to reading comic books again. One of the first titles that hooked me this second time around was Kirkman's The Walking Dead for Image Comics. I have to say that its taken the current renaissance of zombie films and books and ran away with it. Using the same slow, shambling zombies that Romero first made popular with Night of the Living Dead and its subsequent sequels, Kirkman continues the story where Romero usually ended his films. All those times people have wondered what happened to those who survived in zombie films need not imagine anymore. Kirkman has created a believable world where the dead have risen to feast on the living, but has concentrated more on the human dynamic of survival in the face of approaching extinction. I won't say that the story arc collected in this first volume has little or no zombies seen, but they've taken on more as an apocalyptic prop. One can almost substitute some other type of doom in place of zombies and still get a similar effect (as was done in Brian K Vaughn's equally great series, Y: The Last Man). What Kirkman's done is show how humanity's last survivors are now constantly, desperately adapting to a familiar world through unfamiliar circumstances. Characters from the start make the sort of mistakes regular people would make when they don't know exactly everything that is happening around them. Instead of chiding these people as one reads their story, we sympathize and hope for their continued survival. I am hopeful that the rest of the collected trades will be equal to and maybe surpass this first story-arc. Already kirkman's done more to realizing the universe Romero created than alot of the hack filmmakers who have taken Romero's idea and cannibalized it for their own profit. I consider The Walking Dead as a must-read for anyone looking to find something different from all the costumed superhero titles.

All right. So I walked into this comic store and spotted this graphic novel on the shelf and bought it. Why not? I dig Brian Keene. I dig Romero. Why the heck shouldn't I dig this? I took it home. Read it. Read it again. The next day I was back in the comic book store, hunting up volume 2. And volume 3. I'm a believer. This is such a well written thoughtful story. The zombies are secondary to the plot and charecterization. It kind of reads like a soap opera B-movie. Wonderfully compelling. I handed it off to my wife, who hates zombies, and she loved it. Like the dead things we are, we'll keep coming back for more of THE WALKING DEAD. I recommend this one highly.

I bought this book basically on the title alone. I was very happy with what I found inside. This is a story of a man that awakens from a coma to find the world overrun with the undead. The story is very reminiscent of Romero's films, very character driven with the zombies as part of the background and not a goofy gorefest. Great plot, great artwork. It's highly addictive (for myself and those I've loaned it to).

Let's talk, for a second or two, about the coming Zombie Apocalypse, the subject of Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore's ambitious and brutally beautiful graphic novel series "The Walking Dead". Let me break the bad news to ya, big guy. You're not going to survive it. Everyone watches zombie flicks with the notion that they'll survive. They're going to be one of the shotgun-toting mall-rustling heroes when it dawns on everybody that the Army ain't showing up. Well let's put it to you this way: the Zombie Apocalypse is coming, and you're not going to make it. You're going to go get your mail, or be carrying your groceries out of the supermarket, and that's when you're going to meet your first Zombie. You've got a billion things flying through your noggin, Champ: pick up the kids, college tuition, your crazy stock portfolio, war and rumors of war, bio-terrorism, the big presentation at the Office tomorrow. The Zombie is very Zen. It clears its mind. It has one single, driving purpose: it wants to sink its yellow tusks into your flesh and sample a little human pad thai. Isn't that the way it always is---these things, like summer guests, always occur when you're just not prepared? That's the guts of "The Walking Dead". Writer Kirkman states out front that he's less interested in a straight-out horror story---zombies springing out of the darkened woods and chowing down on some filet-au-Bob---than he is in exploring the dark thickets of the human brain exposed to what Kirkman calls "Extreme Situations". Exactly. The story follows Kentucky police officer Rick Grimes, thrown into a coma after a routine traffic stop goes bad. Just like "28 Days Later" he wakes up in an empty hospital. He buzzes on the nurse call-button; nobody shows up to help him. Which is, as we will shortly find out, probably a good thing. Why? Because the hospital---most of it, anyway---is a tomb. Dead. Silent. There's a corpse, supine, fallen between elevator doors, his guts exposed, partially devoured. But for that single dead man, Grimes finds, to his horror, the hospital is deserted. Of course, there's the matter of the lunchroom, stuffed to the grills with the Living Dead. You could call it "While you were Sleeping", but it's not romantic, and it certainly isn't a comedy. While Grimes was out cold, the World Ended. The Dead Walked, and ate, and infected. Civilization ground to a halt. His town is dead; his house, run down; his wife and son, missing. The neighbor's house claimed by squatters. Word is everyone has gone to Atlanta, where the military has cordoned off the city and is protecting civilians. Grimes, in search of his family, in search of answers, takes a police cruiser and heads South. To be sure, in zombie flicks I always root for the flesh-eaters, and here, whatever Kirkman says, you're reading "The Walking Dead" to see zombies, not follow a soap opera. But happily, Rackerton invests enough details in these characters to make them compelling: each has an