The Walking Dead Compendium

The Walking Dead is a comic distributed by Image Comics. Most movies (Land of the Dead and 28 Weeks Later being exceptions) deal with the immediate after effects of a zombie holocaust of doom. TWD is different in that it deals with the long term effects of surviving.

Long term as in this is the way things are now and there isn't any hope of rescue, no hope of things returning to normal, there is only living in this world now. The survivors want nothing more than to contact other survivors or to have the government come and rescue them and make everything normal again. It doesn't happen, it won't happen. It isn't about being rescued and that is what makes this series so fascinating. It asks the question, "What would you do?" Hope has gone the way of the Dodo bird and civilization.

Surviving with you, your family, and your new found friends is all that matters. The "roamers" are everywhere and the places the survivors seek to find solace are always overrun with them. Sleeping with one eye open has become the norm while everyone is trained to use a firearm.

TWD Compendium collects the first forty eight issues of the comic series into one gigantic book. I mean it is massive as it is over one thousand full size comic pages. The series is into the sixties now in terms of numbers so there is a lot more to the story than where it left off.

I finished it over the weekend but it read really pretty fast for something of that size. I started it a few weeks ago and read it off and on.

This is the perfect medium for an epic zombie tale. It is done in black and white and that really has the effect of loneliness, desolation, and dread. I'm sure those were the intended effects of the stark landscapes presented. Overall TWD is a masterpiece of comic writing and art, very graphic as a world overrun by zombies would be.

Read it if you get a chance.