All great zombie movies aren't about zombies at all. They're about the people left behind. They're about finding humanity in the unwinable. There's only one constant in a zombie movie--no one ever wins in a zombie movie. If they're lucky, they survive for another day.

Also, Zombies are the most political and metaphorical and satirical of the monster set. Almost every horror fan and movie critic has written about zombie movies as a way to explain this world. They are us, literally, at our basest instinct. They transcend death. They are the ultimate consumers. The ultimate underclass. The mob. The id as many. The group think made rotting flesh. Every political stripe has used zombies as symbols of the worst of their ideological others. Possibly, only the Pod People are loaded with more not so sub-text.

But what actually drives most good zombie stories are not the flesh-ripping gore, but how the living deal with the dead and the tightening of the screws. It's characters, stupid. We are always our own worst enemies. You can always overcome the amassing slow, stupid and dead. The stupid and alive---that's a whole 'nother ball of dripping wax.

Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead (I've only read the first two Volumes or first the twelve issues of the comic) focuses squarely on the people involved and how they react to loss. The zombie action comes in quick, violent bursts, while the real danger lurks softly in the periphery. This allows the characters to ruminate over their fate, to plot, to self doubt and, in some cases, to go crazy. Just surviving is really the point, physically and emotionally.

The first issue set-up is right out of 28 Days Later, easily the weakest issue of the first twelve. Mild-mannered cop Rick Grimes comes out of a coma to find the zombie apocalypse already a few weeks old. So, much of the gruesome destruction has already been wrought. His family is gone so he must try to find them, a standard zombie movie trope. There's a bunch of familiar zombie set-ups in the first two volumes. In lesser hands, they'd be obvious and cliched, but Kirkman's focus stays with characters and not the situations. This gives the story a more organic feeling. There's really only one reveal, how Rick reunites with his family, that seems beyond the realm of lucky. However, the end of Vol. 1 is a horrific surprise having nothing to do with the undead.

I don't want to give much away with the story, but unlike most horror movies, this story seems to be in it for the long haul. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole story spanned ten years or more. Most zombie movies end after only one of The Walking Dead's set-ups. It's good to see how all the horror affects the characters long-term. We get to see not only the gore, but also the small, fleeting good moments as well.

The artwork is a complex black and white drawn with a deft hand and with some of the best word bubbles and sound effects I've seen in my limited experiences with comics. My only complaint is early on, I had some difficulty separating all the different characters visually. The two main cops have long, thin faces, for example.

I've always hoped that TV would pick up and serialize a weekly zombie TV show following a zombie outbreak through to the full-blown armageddon. It's a story that could unfold slowly with new characters that come and go, background conspiracies, stand alone and overall mythos episodes with a real focus on those affected by the daily tragedies. There should be a religious component, but no definitive explanation.

A drama with the undead, if you will.

The Walking Dead comes closest to this serialized idea.

Tags: review