Review of *The Walking Dead* Episode 1, Season 3

What a great episode!

Let me just say, I am an enthusiast of both the show and the graphic novel version of The Walking Dead. And I don't prefer one over the other. The show has its unique pleasures for me; the graphic novel is a source of delight in other ways. I wanted to start with that little disclaimer because, often times, when I talk about this show with friends, the conversation quickly becomes something like this: which version did it better? Were the prison sequences better in the show than in the graphic novel? Did I like how they changed the story? Or not? I want to table all of those questions for a couple of reasons. Let me explain.

To an extent, I think "characterization" in the show is aided and intensified by the talented actors and their performances. I can connect with the live actors portraying the characters in a more intimate way than with the characters as they are portrayed through the comic book.

The comic book characters, however, never fully come alive for me. And yet, the breakneck speed of the narrative pace of the graphic novel is much more enjoyable than the slow pace of the show. I can read through a hundred pages of the comic and actually see real narrative movement: people die, the party moves around, their environment changes, and so forth.

But let me focus on the show, on the first episode of season 3, which is the goal of this post.

I don't want to spoil the show for anyone who hasn't seen the first episode, but the ending was great! I think the intensity of that moment (you know what I'm talking about -- axe *cough*) will linger with me for a while. I really like the way the characters are evolving. Everyone seems to have become less hopeful, more cynical, and even more exhausted. Not only do the costumes portray the idea that these folks have been living in this "post-Apocalyptic" scenario for a long, long time, the performances of the actors truly drums up this idea: they just all seem exhausted, their nerves on edge, frustrated, angry, and nearly crazy.

One of the cool elements of this show's version of zombies is how they seem to use both the "fast zombie" and the "slow zombie," a characteristic that this episode highlighted. I've heard a lot talk about the distinction between the two, about which "type" of zombie shows up in AMC's The Walking Dead.

I think the producers of this show use both types in accordance to what their narrative demands. In other words, if they want the scene to be charged with energy and danger, they might use a hoard of fast-moving zombies; if they want to evoke the idea that their characters are moving through a routine situation, they might use one or two slow-moving zombies. In other words, the speed of the zombies are altered in accordance to the dramatic scenario. Hmm...

Can't wait for more!

The Zombie Apocalpyse (Post 2): A Review of *The Walking Dead* Compendium 1

After reading The Walking Dead Compendium 1 (that's issues #1-#48), I was inspired to think about the "generic" status of the "zombie apocalypse" genre. It struck me as a very interesting, liminal genre that isn't quite a fantasy, isn't quite a science fiction, and isn't quite a supernatural horror. If you're interested, here's the post: Defining the Zombie Apocalypse

There's lots more to be said about this interesting issue. And yet--I wanted to do something a little less abstract today.

I want to review The Walking Dead issues #1-#48, something useful for a change. I want to make a case for why you should invest in a copy of the compendium and take the time to read it.

But first, a brief reflection about my relationship with comic books...

I've never been much of a comic enthusiast. I guess this is because the image and character of the super hero never stirred me. I don't know why. I can't say why.

There's nothing about the over-the-top hyper-masculine  hero with super powers that I find intrinsically distasteful (hell, one of my favorite characters of all time is Conan of Cimmeria--a kind of "superhero," although he doesn't have super powers).

I just couldn't get into Spiderman or the X-Men or Superman. The comics I read when I did read them were more D&D or sword and sorcery derivative: The Savage Sword of Conan, Conan the Barbarian (Marvel); and The Warlord (DC) were and still are my favorites (I have a fair collection of them).

Once I started graduate school, some friends of mine who shared my genre interests introduced me to what they described more "artistic" comic books, which folks tended to call "graphic novels": Alan Moore's The Watchmen, Charles Burns Black Hole.

Sidenote: I think this term, the "graphic novel" is kind of funny. It's my sense that the term "graphic novel" is meant to portray the idea of these work's aspiration towards artistic seriousness. Historically, of course, novel, was a kind of artistic pejorative word, detonating a type of colloquial writing in contrast to verse. It's a kind of "validating term" enthusiasts use in order to claim some artistic credibility. Science fiction enthusiasts do a similar move when they refer to their favorite genre as "extrapolative fiction" or "speculative fiction."

My favorite validating term for comics term is "sequential art," which connotes the theoretical and formal.

And now, my review of The Walking Dead...

Long story short: I was first introduced to The Walking Dead as a graphic novel. Little did I know, it was actually a monthly comic and what I had been given was a compendium of many issues.

This is where I'd like to begin: reminding folks that Walking Dead: Compendium 1 is not a single novel. It wasn't written, I don't think, as an overarching narrative (I could be wrong--this is a critic's hunch).

It feels as if the narrative unfolds as you read it. In other words, it seems to respond and adapt to previous events. You get the sense you get with other serialized narratives (I'm thinking of shows like Lost, Battlestar Galactica, etc.) that the writers are exploring and tracing characters, subplots, and scenarios as you are reading.

With that said, there's a quality to The Walking Dead I'd like to call "narrative vitality." The story seems alive. What do I mean by this? Well, as I read, I don't get the sense that the writers know precisely where the narrative is going, i.e. whose going to live, what's going to happen. I find this as the primary source of the narrative's pleasure. Often times, when you turn the page and are surprised to see one of your favorite characters (who you thought was a main character) being eaten by zombies, you get the sense that the writers were just as surprised as you.

The narrative is just great. It possesses a kind of adaptability, as if at the end of each issue the writers had no idea what was going to happen. And, more importantly, they seem to have been open to the development of any scenario. This is what keeps you reading, this idea that anything could happen.

O.k.. Enough about narrative. What about the style?

I'm not as qualified to discuss in any substantial way visual art. I just don't have the vocabulary for the conceptual tools. With that said, let's give it a try!

First off, the art does change throughout the compendium. They change artists. From issues #1 to #6 the artist is Tony Moore; and at issue #7 the artist changes and becomes Charlie Adlard.

I really like Moore's artwork; however, I absolutely prefer Adlard's. There's something visceral and dark about Adlard's work that conforms so wonderfully to the dark world related by the comic book.  I would describe Adlard's work as beautifully manipulating dark and light shapes. It's tends towards "evocative two dimensionality," I think, and relies less on shading and more on high contrasts between black and white. It's so interesting.

Summary: if you like the AMC show, The Walking Dead, I highly recommend you read this, the comic that inspires it. It's just as mature and exciting and intriguing as the show; at times, it much more intense than the show. The Walking Dead is a comic book at it's best.

It beautifully probes how the struggle to survive intensifies and modifies our sometimes dark, sometimes inspiring, human nature.

Defining the Zombie Apocalypse (Post 1): Not a Fantasy, Not a Sci-fi, Not a Horror

Yesterday I finished reading Compendium 1 of Robert Kirkman's comic, The Walking Dead (issues #1-#48).

First off, I really enjoyed it! I have some minor resevervations that I'll explore in a later post. But, in general, if you haven't read the comic book and love the show (this was how I came to it), I highly recommend it to you. It's so interesting.

But, before I get into discussing specifically The Walking Dead (this will come in a later post), I want to explore some thoughts about the "zombie apocalypse" genre.

It was a strange realization, but when I started seriously considering "the zombie apocalypse" sub-genre, I realized I don't know how to describe it.

Is the "zombie apocalypse" a fantasy?

Well, the dead rising is a common theme in modern fantasy. The icon of the sword wielding hero fighting an animated human skeleton is a common trope in modern fantasy (sword and sorcery specifically). And yet, in many zombie apocalypse texts there is a tendency to attempt to describe the phenomenon of the dead rising in terms of scientific theory. E.g. it's a disease; it's a new micro-organism; it's the result of the earth passing through a comet, etc..

This seems to disqualify it as a fantasy for me, which seems to turn, specifically, on how fantastic phenomena are treated. In fantasy, the appeal is always to magic, the inexplicable. A key element of fantasy is, to my mind, the thesis that all is not explainable through recourse to the observable world.

And so, is the "zombie apocalypse" a science fiction?

Hmm. The appeal to science to explain the phenomenon of zombies seems to make it conform to the conventions of hard science fiction. It is a kind of "extrapolative" genre. It's kind of a thought experiment based upon the initiating question: "what if all the dead rose up?" And yet--it feels wrong to call the "zombie apocalypse" a science fiction as it doesn't manifest any of the familiar tropes of the genre.

The key source of drama in a zombie apocalypse is always the struggles of the survivors. The story seems to emerge from a conflict with Nature (i.e. "Nature" designated as a world filled with zombie). And so, the zombie apocalypse seems to have more in common with the naturalistic survival stories of, say, Jack London, than the speculative stories of H.G. Wells.

Is the "zombie apocalypse" a horror?

Hmm. This feels the most intuitively correct. I'm sure lots of folk would be happy just filing the sub-genre away after glimpsing the gore, the undead, etc.. I'm not willing to do that. There's something about the "zombie apocalypse" that disqualifies it as a horror to me. Before you call BS on me, let me try to make a case for it.

In a "pure" horror tale, the key aesthetic effect is the experience of horror. Thus, the monster (or the ghost, or the demon, or the alien) emerges as a kind of negativity, something that cannot be fully represented or described: you see a flash of a tail, a pair of eyes, some teeth, etc.. The "experience of horror," according to many theorists of the genre, is that moment when our language breaks down, when we can't describe what - that - thing - is. In the "zombie apocalypse," you always know precisely what the horror is: zombies. And in these zombie apocalypse tales, very often the characters become somewhat desensitized to the sight of zombies and move among them, somewhat un-fazed (although their guard is always up).

So, we're back to where we began: how do describe the "zombie apocalypse" genre. I have a working answer. I don't have time to write it up just now. Tomorrow I'll pick up where I left off.