Okay, I'm going to say this right up front, and everyone can get as huffy as they'd like: it's all true.

I knew that the show had deviated from the comics in a number of ways, but there were FAR more differences than I anticipated. Lots of new characters, characters having storylines that were very different from the show, characters having storylines that other characters in the show had...missing characters! The list goes on. In our society, you never would want to go prison, but in an apocalyptical dystopia plagued with zombies, a prison would look like the logical choice. Ammo is scarce, so that’s why that being able to shoot and doing it with precision becomes a vital skill where, Andrea, a young blonde woman, is showing to be the best shooter of the group.But as far as reliance on tradition goes, you could do worse than Shakespeare. Yes, I said Shakespeare: 1)Conflict one. 2)Conflict two. 3)Violence, resolving one of the above, complicating the other. 4)Discourse on ethics 5)Repeat. I found a lot of the differences interesting in the general plot of the story. Andrea was pretty awesome in the comics and while I didn't mind her in the show, I can see that her character was done a huge disservice. On the other hand, Carol was vastly improved on in the show. Michonne was still just as badass in both but I felt glad that she didn't have to go through the same trauma. The Governor was on a whole other level of evil in the comics than the show. He has always been my most hated 'villain' in the show because although we were shown people that technically did worse or more insane things, I found him incredibly creepy and unnerving because he's the kind of manipulative bastard that I can't stand. The show gave him some episodes that seemed like they were trying to almost redeem him which I hated so I was so glad that the comics showed him as truly vile throughout. Some of the characters from the show don't exist in the comics and vice versa and while I missed the presence of some of the characters (Read: Daryl and Merle) I wasn't fussed about the exclusion of others. On the other hand, I could understand why they'd left out some of the characters from the comics as they really just felt like spare parts and extra bodies with no real purpose besides getting killed off. Maggie remained in the show but Hershel's other kids (there were 5 others besides Maggie) were condensed into the character of Beth, who I admit I wasn't the biggest fan of but I think having just her instead of trying to squeeze all the others into it made a lot more sense for the show. OK, I could be wrong, never having read any zombie comix ( comix is the wrong word, but graphic novel? Does that describe an incomplete collection of separate issues?). But I'm just assuming zombie comix were pretty much like most action comix, movies, novels, and television shows where it is commonplace for characters to witness the most disturbing things and experience fallout for only twenty or so scripted seconds or less: "Oh my God that was terrible!" "Yeah, but it's over now." "You're right. We have to move on." In action fiction of most media people get over emotional trauma even faster than bullet wounds. Think about it: every zombie story rests on the same basic plot. The dead have risen and a small band of living survivors tries to find safety in a world that is actively trying to kill them. That's it. Sure, the details may vary - fast zombies or slow ones, a cure or no cure, they eat brains or they'll eat anything, trapped in a mall or a farmhouse - but the foundation of the story is the same, and woe betide the writer who strays too far from the formula. Writing a zombie story means agreeing to adhere to a set of predetermined set of rules, which allow only a little room for straying. Some spoilers for both the show and the graphic novel herein. I tried not to include too many. You have been warned.)

Morgan is outside chopping wood. Then he comes in and talks to Duane. They talk and Morgan gives Duane a game boy for Christmas since they don't know the exact date. He tells Duane to conserve his batteries because they are hard to find. He then talks to Duane about paying for everything they "stole" to survive. He says sorry because the thoughts are sad and he should not be talking about this stuff but Duane didn't pay attention because he was playing his game. He then says Merry Christmas to Duane. What I am saying is, I loved this huge ass volume. It was everything I expected it to be and more. Everything I look for in a source material. This graphic novel has eluded me for so long, I've been meaning to read it for such a long time, so this felt like homecoming to me. In more ways than one. The writing is melodramatic as all get-out. I didn't get the impression that the writers had any idea what characters they had intended to survive - it's an amateurish device to kill off your characters, particularly given how dependent the story becomes upon characters constantly dying. Sure,it's meant to convey the new reality - but we all know how zombie movies and post-apocalyptic scenarios work... lots of people die, because it's no longer a friendly world in which everyone can survive without a thought. Killing off so many characters, when you've already got a very small cast, just strikes me as emotionally manipulative. In a movie, it's cool with me; your commitment is two hours or less and it doesn't really matter if the entire character cast ends up butchered or eaten alive. In a long-running series of books or comics, it's cliched and awful. As this is a comic series, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the art, which is overall quite good. There were a few times when I had trouble telling some characters apart, but the high rate of attrition generally took care of that problem. The detail in the artwork is very impressive, though I can imagine there were more than a few times that Charlie Adlard cursed Robert Kirkman for setting a large part of the series in a locale with a prominent chain-link fence that couldn't easily be ignored. As this is a horror comic, the art is sometimes horrifying, very graphic and quite satisfying without being gratuitous. Well, mostly without being gratuitous.... And of course, it will always be about that one Capistrano Birds song. This volume is so good that Daryl's absence wasn't even conspicuous, even though I missed his presence.

Collected Editions

There's also the question of how to organize a post-outbreak society. What kind of person or people should run the survivors' societies? Is this an opportunity to remake civilization, or should the old ways be adhered to? How much leeway to we have in restarting the world, and what will that look like in the end? The characters in this story have to deal with how to define a family when one's partner or parents or children could die at any time. They have a chance to redefine what is lawful and illegal, to toy with the notions of what is right and wrong, and to re-evaluate the role religion plays in their lives. It's a chance to rebuild the world from scratch, and the characters in this story test those limits in interesting and sometimes unsettling ways.