Saturday 11 August 2012

The Walking Dead: Days Gone Bye (2007)

"L--Leave me. When I come back ... Maybe I'll find--find my family ... ... Maybe they c--came back too. Maybe we can be together again."

While the TV series is on its mid-season break, I thought that I would re-read the comic book collections that I own that inspired it and see how they compare. This book collects issues 1 - 6 of the ongoing series and the story provides the basis for the first season. It was written by the prolific Robert Kirkman who also created the Marvel Zombies series and a number of other books including Invincible and Battle Pope. The art was by Tony Moore who worked with Kirkman on Battle Pope as well as the Vertigo series The Exterminators.

Police officer Rick Grimes wakes up from a coma in a hospital bed after being shot in the line of duty. He finds the hospital deserted apart from hordes of ravenous zombies that he inadvertently sets free. Escaping the hospital, he finds that the outside world has also gone to hell in his absence. Finding his family missing, he sets off to Atlanta determined to find out if they are still alive.

This is a great character driven piece that concentrates on the survivors of a cataclysmic event and the trials they go through day to day. The genius of the work is the way that Kirkman can involve you so completely in the human drama that you almost relax and forget about the zombies until they reappear in horrific and usually fatal interludes. The extremely violent episodes  are fantastically drawn by Tony Moore with some additional work on the black and white artwork from Cliff Rathburn.

Spoilers ahead: for those who have seen the TV series but not read the books (or vice versa) I am going to discuss in the rest of this post some of the differences between the two. So stop reading now if you don't want to know.



As I said at the beginning this book is the basis for almost the entire first season of the TV show. It covers up to about episode 5 - after the attack in camp and the death of Andrea's sister but before they break camp and head out on the road. To expand the story line into a six part series, the writers have had to expand upon some of the situations in the comic and have had time to explore them in more depth. A good example of this is the death of Andrea's sister which happens very quickly in the comic but is given a much more dramatic interpretation in the TV series. There is also some new scenes written especially for the TV series such as in episode 4 with the ex-gang members protecting some elderly people and in the final episode with the story line concerning the origin of the plague and the CDC not appearing in the books - at least as far as I have read.

The composition of the surviving group is different between the two media as well - the TV series has less children in the group and a different selection of adults. But the one major cast difference is the killing of Rick's deputy, Shane, at the end of this book. He of course survives into the second season in the TV series and I always felt that it was an unexpected (given the dramatic opening to the series) cop out not to show Shane's death. However, the circumstances are coming together now in the series that could lead to this so I will say no more for now. I was pleased that, for the most part, the TV series in season one portrayed a world in which none of the main characters were safe, as in the comics, however they seem to have shied away from that a little in the second season - but may be my memory is faulty but I will find out as I continue onto book 2.

First published on RevolutionSF on Sunday Dec 25, 2011

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