As you may know from watching my recent comic reviews, I’ve recently started reading several different comic book series. One of them is The Walking Dead. I’ve got 96 issues in 2 compendiums and I feel that this experience is epic enough to warrant written reviews by chapter. Now you may be thinking, “But Sam, your videos are funny and you get drunk all the time won’t you please make us Walking Dead videos instead???”. Well, no…no I won’t. I’ve already taken on all of Buffy to review in video form, and taking on 9 years of this series just sounds like too much. Maybe I’ll do one or two if the chapters are particularly entertaining. In this first installment you get my thoughts on the first chapter! Yay? And of course this post, along with the next one will be rife with comparisons to the TV show. If you are not up to date with the TV show there are some SPOILERS AHEAD!!!! Without further ado…

So, Rick wakes up in the hospital, he sees some zombies…he cries…within the first few pages after we meet Rick, he cries. This felt like the beginning of the creation of a very different characters (at least initially) compared to my TV perception of Rick. I’m excited about this, I feel that it will allow for a great deal of character development for Rick. While I certainly feel that he has changed a great deal in the TV adaptation, we don’t get the recurring theme that Rick used to be a fairly non-violent person on a regular basis. He meets up with the father and son we meet in episode 1 of the tv show, and helps them get some ammunition and a car. Rick leaves them, heads towards Atlanta, gets saved by Glenn (sound familiar?) and meets up with the rest of the gang.

No major surprises in Glenn’s introduction, though he seems a bit more troubled and a bit more awesome. Also no major surprised in the plot for this whole chapter. Rick is introduced to the rest of the gang, which reveals some changes in the roster. Carol’s husband is already dead which I was thrilled about, and she’s also made out to be a bit more sexualized than tv season 1 & 2 Carol but not overbearingly so. She’s with Sophia of course. There’s a whole other family (Allen, Donna, and the twins) who don’t appear on TV. Dale’s with Amy and Andrea, and most of the gang thinks they’re hooking up in Dale’s RV…*shivers*. Jim’s still there…but of course I didn’t expect him to hang around for long.

Now the first major surprise to me is that there is no Daryl and no Merle. The mission into Atlanta was much less of an issue, the bit with the zombie guts still happened and Rick almost got bit. I miss Daryl though…he’s probably my favorite so I hope he’s in the series later….please? Oh and Shane’s there too…anyway they’re all hanging out in the woods near Atlanta and Rick wants them to move on because their two close to a city infested with zombies…seems logical. Shane’s convinced the government’s gonna come save them any day now and they should stay put.

At this point everyone learns how to shoot, to which I only have this to say: Halle-freakin-lujah. If they would’ve just taught everyone to shoot from the off, they would’ve had much better odds during the invasion of the camp right? Well no…Amy still dies and Jim still gets bitten. They end up leaving Jim behind, and there’s no big dramatic moment where Andrea waits for Amy to wake up all zombified, they just shoot her in the head thank god.

At the end of the chapter Rick is out with Carl and Shane hunting, and Shane…just looses his mind. He starts going off about how terrible everything is and how he doesn’t want to leave the city because he’s terrified of the government not finding them. He also insinuates that something happened with Lori, but no major details have been given so far. Based on an earlier conversation he had with Lori, we can assume they hooked up but it seems like it was far less of a thing than in the TV show. Shane ends up aiming a shotgun at Rick, and Carl shoots Shane in the neck killing him. I hope that he severed the spinal cord, otherwise it’s possible we may see a zombie Shane one day which is terrifying. But hey! It’s only the end of chapter one and Shane’s already dead! Score one for the comics, that guys a slimy git.

Again I wasn’t really too surprised by anything in chapter one, apart from Daryl and Merle not being around, and Shane’s death being shifted up. At least one of those surprises was a good one. The fact that the comics are in black and white creates this feeling of perpetual darkness, and utter hopelessness during the night. Something about an all black panel just oozes feelings of doom. The only major characters that have struck me as different so far are Lori, and Carol. Rick as well, but I can see him quickly becoming the tv character.

Chapter two will be coming soon! Thanks for reading, as always you’re awesome.

-SM

PS if you’re tired of reading go check out this video review ^_^ http://www.thatruled.com/comic-review-show-doctor-who-1/