Writer: Robert Kirkman / Penciller: Tony Moore / Additional Gray Tones by Cliff Rathburn / Collects: The Walking Dead #1-#5 Skybound / Image Comics
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3rd October 2020
The Pitch: An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe, causing the dead to rise and feed on the living. In a matter of months, society has crumbled: There is no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV. Rick Grimes finds himself one of the few survivors in this terrifying future. A couple of months ago he was a small-town cop who had never fired a shot and only ever saw one dead body. Separated from his family, he must now sort through all the death and confusion to try and find his wife and son. In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally begin living.
In the introduction to this first volume of the Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman writes that he is “in it for the long haul”. It's an oft-used remark from comic creators and one that doesn't always hold water when you consider the vagaries of a niche market that's entirely dependent on often fickle fans. Well, now that season 10 of the TV series is on the horizon, 193 issues of the comic have come and gone, over 20 volumes of that comic have been collected in trade and haven't been out of print yet, and the series has spun-off into not one but now two more shows... I'm willing to bet those of us that read Kirkman's intro with a grain of salt are probably feeling a bit stupid now. But what is it about The Walking Dead comic that grabbed people's attention? What is it that still keeps us interested in the Dead Inside?
In re-reading the first volume, it's the lack of colour that grabs you first. I wonder if black and white were chosen by Kirkman and Moore because seeing the pulsating, animated remains of people bloodily, hungrily and inhumanly tear through the flesh of the survivors of this global apocalypse would render it too stomach-churning? As an aside I have to tell you that my girlfriend and I have a dinner show – a television programme that we watch one episode a night of whilst we eat dinner together. Walking Dead survived five and a half seasons before we decided it was all too bleak and all too bloody to enjoy a meal in front of. We haven't gone back to it since as its violence coupled with its unending, shark-like mobility proved to be too much. The show missed the comic's prophylactic lack of colour. Black and white, at least for my generation also adds the feel of reportage or documentary. For the longest time when I was growing up, all the newspapers in the UK were black and white, so the feel is one of actuality. It also gives you lots of stark, white space. Lowers the temperature. As the weather changes and winter begins to set in for the comics characters, so too for us, the readers.
There's been a strong survivalist bent to the zeitgeist in the last two decades. Bear Grylls probably has a lot to answer for. But like everything that starts on the edges of society, it filters down to the centre soon enough. People's behaviour during the pandemic has been like watching an extreme sport be made of selfishness. The characters in Walking Dead aren't immune to that sickness either. But you can see the motives for their behaviour and it hits the right emotional notes. Take Shane, for example. The deputy who falls for his boss' wife, essentially. When it comes time for the reckoning, instead of hating Shane, we actually empathise with him. The world has ended and the loneliness he probably kept at bay in his regular life is now bearing down on him. Does it make him right in his actions? No, but you have to at least feel a little remorse for the guy. In fact, the first volume deals with the loneliness of being the last people alive head on. Look at Dale, who invites the two young women in the camp to live in his trailer, then when pressed later reveals that they simply keep him company and help him clean, which in his advancing years and having lost his wife in the early days of the outbreak, he desperately needs aid with. What does this say about us? That we're going to need the company of others more than we'll need money or white goods when the end finally comes.
EVEN WITH THE INTEREST IN THE POLITICS OF GEORGE A. ROMERO, THE ZOMBIE SUB-GENRE OFTEN FLOUNDERED
Walking Dead, like any good modern piece of mass-scale art, takes us through genres too. We start in media res, with a cop actioner, only to awaken in the middle of a horror film, then take a rest stop into familial survivalist drama, then westerns when Rick has to abandon his now useless patrol car and continue his journey to Atlanta on a horse. And that's what the rest of the book becomes, at least in the first volume. A western. The camp that Rick hooks up with become pilgrims making their way across a new frontier, defending themselves against a hostile, indigenous population. Only here, it's the pilgrims and homesteaders that have the moral imperative – as the last men and women alive they must survive. The journey through those genres is distinctly American since it's been American entertainment that's been at the heart of our remix culture since the dawn of the blockbuster age, even though it's indicated that the outbreak is worldwide. Of course with a breakdown in society comes a breakdown in technologies, so we never get to see beyond American shores. It makes me wonder if the comic caught the beginning of a dark movement, the one that has looked inward and thought only of itself. Could the dead that walk be a metaphor for the ageing population, the baby boomers who have become about their own prejudices and comforts to such a degree that they vote and legislate against future generations? Against change? Are they the bleak, new status quo of shambling, all-consuming hunger?
Hard to tell. I think Kirman was interested in reviving and revitalising a genre that by its nature had become moribund. Even with the remake of Dawn of the Dead and resurgent interest in the politics of George A Romero, the zombie sub-genre had oftentimes floundered almost as soon as it got restarted. Was there too much focus on political themes and not enough on the creeping, shambling horror? It's possible. But as Romero once said the political themes came after the fact. The horror came first and the depth was there in the background, seeping in without anyone's knowledge. Maybe The Walking Dead proved such a phenomenon because we needed to imagine what the end might be like and how we might behave. It's fascinating to think that the apocalypse in Walking Dead is brought by a disease – one which we all have and there can be no cure from. It either manifests or it doesn't. This in itself is a good way to think about the less attractive aspects of our personalities and politics, all encoded but dormant. We don't always know how our basic information is going to manifest. And as the world offers – no, throws – more data at us, we let strange things influence how our 'programming' writes our personalities. We are at overload, in life, in work. Who knows what’s going to give? Maybe we love The Walking Dead because we see ourselves, not just in the survivors but in the dead themselves, shambling through, our impulses and desires reduced to just two: feed and keep going. Devour each other and move on. Maybe we fell in love with The Walking Dead because we needed it as a warning. No matter what, stay alive inside.
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