The Walking Dead (Seasons 1 & 2 and the Graphic Novel)
Posted: October 3rd, 2011, 10:21 pm
With the upcoming season, I figure this thread will come up sooner or later.
I read The Walking Dead Compendium Vol. 01 which consists of the first 50 (or so) issues. To put that in perspective, the series is up to around #90 right now. And it was around #65 during the production of the first season of the show.
Things may come together eventually... but the first compendium is certainly not a "complete" story in itself. Plenty of subplots have come and gone, and a pretty major event happens in the last few pages, but it's mostly just a lot of STUFF going on. Maybe someone who has read the next 40 issues will have a different perspective, but I don't think the author had any clear idea of where he would take this story when he first began.
It reminds me of Lost in that the planning apparently stopped right after coming up with an intriguing premise. It's actually somehow even LESS than Lost because the zombie apocalypse scenario has already been done to death (literally). It's almost as if these writers were caught off guard by being asked to write more than a setup.
For as much that does happen in the comic, it's odd that the TV show makes use of so little of it. There are countless cues in the comics they could use an starting points for plots and subplots, but the show opts for going with mostly original content. In fact, one of the strongest ties the show has to the comics (aside from the name) is a general lack of direction. The way the characters were in and out of the CDC bunker like that was a little too reminiscent of a certain hatch.
I read The Walking Dead Compendium Vol. 01 which consists of the first 50 (or so) issues. To put that in perspective, the series is up to around #90 right now. And it was around #65 during the production of the first season of the show.
Things may come together eventually... but the first compendium is certainly not a "complete" story in itself. Plenty of subplots have come and gone, and a pretty major event happens in the last few pages, but it's mostly just a lot of STUFF going on. Maybe someone who has read the next 40 issues will have a different perspective, but I don't think the author had any clear idea of where he would take this story when he first began.
It reminds me of Lost in that the planning apparently stopped right after coming up with an intriguing premise. It's actually somehow even LESS than Lost because the zombie apocalypse scenario has already been done to death (literally). It's almost as if these writers were caught off guard by being asked to write more than a setup.
For as much that does happen in the comic, it's odd that the TV show makes use of so little of it. There are countless cues in the comics they could use an starting points for plots and subplots, but the show opts for going with mostly original content. In fact, one of the strongest ties the show has to the comics (aside from the name) is a general lack of direction. The way the characters were in and out of the CDC bunker like that was a little too reminiscent of a certain hatch.