There's a trade in the pipeline, and the buzz keeps growing, so it looks like The Walking Dead is around for the long haul. That's good news to me, because this is easily my favorite of Kirkman's many books, an unusual genre that I didn't think could support an ongoing book until I read this one and realized that it certainly could. What's really impressive about Walking Dead, aside from the writing and art in general, is that despite Kirkman and Moore pacing the book for a long run, each issue also has some key story elements in it. The story is moving right along, always featuring new and neat ideas about what it might be like to live in a world overrun by zombies. This may be a monster story, but the heart of the tale isn't about scares, it's about humans and society and change, and there's plenty of rich material to be found in that vein.
What I love about these characters is that I find it so easy to relate to them. Kirkman's hero isn't a gun-toting hero cop, he's a local cop who never fired his gun before he had to fire it into a zombie. His partner isn't a complete jerk, he's just a guy who had a thing for the hero's wife and saw his chance. And Glenn, the runner and supply seeker for the group, isn't an iron-willed tracker or anything like that, he's still got fear and uncertainty about going into the city even as he does it for the good of the community. Though Kirkman hasn't put a lot of time into developing all the members of this small community, there's definitely a sense of community and a strange new routine to be found on the pages that feature them.
However, that isn't to say that the story is routine in any way. Though the zombies aren't present in a lot of the issue, their presence is always felt in the way that things have changed, and when they are overtly seen or referred to, it can be pretty creepy. Glenn's story of what happened to Jim is downright horrifying, and the tension when Glenn and Rick enter the city is palpable. Rick's role as thinking man's hero is cemented this issue when he comes up with a clever way to infiltrate the city, but the uncertainty of whether or not its going to work, not to mention the danger that these characters are in, never goes far from the reader's mind.
Tony Moore's artwork is impressive throughout, but it is in these city scenes that he really proves his skills. His zombies, covered in sores and insects, feel as real and scary as anything you'll see in a Hollywood flick. The dead eyes, the shambling walk, the broken mockery of mankind are all suggested in his still frames. And the desolation of the cities is there as well, especially in the splash page that shows an abandoned tank in the midst of zombies and corpses. He also has a nice balance between chaos and clarity of storytelling as the heroes embark on a rain-soaked run to escape the zombie hordes. The only complaint I have is that the covers are so evocative and so beautiful, I wish that the whole book could have that kind of color, but it works so well in black and white as well that I don't know if that would be an improvement or a detriment to the book.
The Walking Dead is a story about monsters and the apocalypse, but the reason it works is because of the human element. Kirkman and Moore have crafted a cast of people we can care about and they're as interested in showing the post-zombie society as they are in showing the protagonists dealing with the walking dead of the title. This title was one of the best surprises of 2003, and I look forward to seeing a lot more in 2004.
