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 | The Walking Dead Robert Kirkman & Tony Moore Image Comics, 96pp  Here's the good thing about zombie stories: they give a writer the chance to explore issues of what exactly it is to be human. Here we have creatures that lurk between life and death, possessed of their animus and driven by primal urges to walk and feed, but bereft of the higher qualities that separate us from the beasts. It's a fascinating area to explore, not to mention the obvious horror elements that make for a rollicking good adventure: for one thing, how do you kill a relentless monster that's already dead?Here's the bad thing about zombie stories: it's all been done and done. What hasn't been covered by George Romero in his four genre-defining '...Dead' films has been strip-mined by everyone from Italian schlock horror master Mario Bava to Sam Raimi and UK writer/comedian Simon 'Shaun Of The Dead' Pegg. And that's just film: throw in video games (most obviously the 'Resident Evil' series), as well as countless comics and novels and you'd be hard-pressed to find much of a new slant on the subject. To his credit, writer Robert Kirkman doesn't obviously rip off any other horror work with the opening to 'The Walking Dead', in which wounded police officer Rick Grimes comes to in an eerily silent hospital. No, instead he rips off a science fiction work - specifically, the opening to John Wyndham's 'Day Of The Triffids'. After realising the effects of the glowing asteroids - sorry, I mean the inexplicable zombie disease - Grimes soon discovers that he's one of the few folks not transformed into a rotting, living corpse as he fights his way home to discover his wife and child missing, presumed (un)dead. However, he takes a punt that they'd have headed for the nearest big city and so sets off towards Atlanta, falling in a with a plucky, rag-tag bunch of survivors in the process. The dialogue's sharp, if fairly nondescript, and Tony Moore's line drawings are bold and clear, which is actually slightly at odds with the darkness of the story. And the story does get dark as the group bicker and fight among themselves as the zombies come closer and closer to the camp - you know, sort of like in 'Night Of The Living Dead'. Look, 'The Walking Dead' is tightly written, well illustrated and captures the paranoia and crushing desperation of a world fallen apart - but unless you're into zombie stories you'd probably not pick it up, and if you're already a fan it's certainly nothing that you haven't seen before.  | |
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