The Walking Dead Season 1 v Walking Dead Comic

So, I'm a great fan of Zombie fantasy, fiction, comedy, horror, you name it.  And so I was thrilled that someone had made a TV series about the Zombie Apocaplypse, The Walking Dead.  I had never heard of the comic until then, and I didn't watch the series until far after it came to the screen.  Also, as a full disclosure, I have not read to where Season One ends in the comic, though I have already been told that the CDC plays absolutely no role in it.

Anyway, I wanted to write today--not a review, but a commentary, on zombie fiction and in particular about the divergence between the Walking Dead comic and series.

First of all, some definitions.  Let's say that there are five separate Zombie genres at work here, though most movies use several different definitions of zombie type at once.

Zombie B-Horror.
This is the movie that we've all seen.  Radioactive waste falls off a truck in a small, depressed western town.  The good guy gets the girl, and the town drunk/rapist/plutocrat gets it in the end--happy ending.  The zombies either end up all dead, or the military successfully cordons off the town and bombs the shit out of it.  Last frame:  One zombie escapes: future unknown.  Themes:  Guy gets Girl, Evil is Punished, Zombies are Gross, Suspense.  Examples:  Zombies, Zombies Zombies, and Evil Dead.

Zombie Apocalypse.
Though this genre was started in effect by George Romero, the Dawn of the Dead movies have always had a B-Movie flair to them, evincing little of the serious nature of films like 28 Days Later.  The Zombie Apocalypse is sweeping in scale, and crosses over into regular Apocalyptic themes of isolation and alienation. Zombie Apocalypse movies are scary, but they're not going for cheap laughs or basic horror flick thrills.  The thrill instead, is the thrill all of us get at seeing the entire world laid to waste.  Why is that a thrill?  Subject of another post my friends, another post. Themes: Isolation, alienation, Ludditism, anti-consumerism, survival in a post-apocalyptic world, anti-government.

The Rare Disease Zombie
The rare disease zombie is a cross over genre, and it's ultimately the more modern type of zombie.  Let's call it the accepted zombie rule at present.  Gone are the days when a zombie could be created by an evil necromancer, of which The Evil Dead movies have plenty.  Of course a film like 28 Days Later borrows from both the Rare Disease and Zombie Apocalypse genres.  Other films like Legend, use the same sort of class for typing zombies.  They aren't undead, or dead at all, they're merely changed to where they are no longer human, and need constant violence to survive. This presents a problem however, and requires some creative shooting.  A main component of what makes zombies scary, is the fact that they're decomposing.  Dead things = yuck.  So while Rare Disease zombies no longer feel pain, they are not really stopped by the things that would stop a living being. Bleeding out, sepsis, loss of limbs, etc.  Themes: Perfectly explainable zombies, no cure, hopeless, anti-science. Examples: I am Legend, 28 Days Later.

The Magic Zombie
Mentioned above, you NEVER see magic zombies anymore.  Why?  Who believes in magic?  For some reason, the belief in Rare Disease Zombie is perfectly acceptable.  Of course, in fiction, the Magic Zombie is unalive and well.  Particularly in the Malazan world of Steven Erikson.  In some ways, I think the Magic Zombie makes more sense than the Rare Disease Zombie.  After all, zombies are scientifically impossible.  The miracle of complexity that keeps our bodies motoring cannot exist without all the moving parts working more or less ok.  They might as well be motored by some force external to them.  Themes: Zombies are Gross, Zombies Defy Explanation, External Zombie Creation

The RomZomCom
These movies are awesome.  There is a lot of humor in the field, and Zombie B-Horror encapsulates a lot of that.  Movies like Evil Dead, and Dawn of the Dead are famous for their campy humor.  However, of late, a new genre, the RomZomCom has uprooted the old failsafes. These are very modern movies, with very smart sophisticated characters.  This is important to the genre, because B-Movie Zombies typically involve one or more bimbos and dumb jocks.  The zombiness isn't really explained, but it isn't really important either.  What's important is that the guy gets the girl.  Themes: Guy gets Girl, Jocks are Punished, Zombies are Gross, Survival. Examples: Shawn of the Dead, Zombieland.  By the way, if you haven't seen Zombieland, do it.  It's awesome.

Now that we've established our definitions, I think its safe to say that The Walking Dead is a hybrid Rare Disease Zombie, and Apocalyptic Zombie.  Our first thrills are seeing the empty hospital, the town completely ransacked.  The utter silence.  These things set up the exact type of expectations we would have for a Rare Disease Apocalyptic Zombie.  Already we know science has failed, the government has completely failed to control the situation, dogs and cats living together, you get the picture.  And Walking Dead does not disappoint.  Again and again, we see the dissolution of the world, the empty streets, the undead children, the broken windows.  Also, we see the failed actions of the government.  Rows of body bags, furnaces choked with semi crisp corpses.  Tanks and dead soldiers with machine guns lay willy-nilly.  This is an important aspect of the genre.  It says "Government Failed You."

Our hero is a family man.  This is a definite sign that this ain't no RomZomCom.  He has a wife and son, and they're missing.  So we have a direction.  Find the family.  This is fairly mundane to me, it's a common apocalypse theme.  And I totally get it, but it does make for a boring hero.  It makes for a particularly boring hero because you know that A) he finds his wife, or B) he finds his wife is dead, or C) he finds his wife and then she dies, or D) he finds his wife, and then he has to "kill" her.  Of course, in a Guy Gets Girl situation, you know that there's only one option, but the sexual tension, and eventual seduction provide endless entertainment.

While looking for his wife, a survivor bats him over the head, and we learn a few things.  A) we have no idea what happened, but it happened fast.  B) News reports told the people to flee to the cities.  Ok. I have a problem with this.  Almost every major disaster includes a plan to evacuate cities.  Why evacuate the countryside?  The answer is that "the government" decided that citizens would be easier to protect grouped together.  That's milarky.  And of course, as we find out later, "reality" bears this out as milarky when we discover that Atlanta was a warzone. And then an undead graveyard.  Frankly, I think it unlikely that people would be willing, or even able to flee to cities. Or that governments would urge people to go to them.  Rather, I think the government would issue two types of warning.  One) Stock Up, Lock Up.  Two) Set up Safe Zones and Facilities.

So he goes to Atlanta.  As someone who nearly moved to Atlanta, I was intrigued.  Atlanta is not a walking city.  From what I learned, you pretty much need a car to get around.  And so of course, he gets a horse.  This is the Luddite philosophy at work.  Man back to nature.  Of course, the horse gets eaten, and he survives by hiding out in a tank.  I have to say overall, the series was very entertaining.  So entertaining that I decided to read the comic book.

This was a mistake.  If the TV series is slightly right of center, the comic book is downright libertarian, conservative even.  The authors make it devastatingly clear that they don't trust the government, all men are cruel beasts just beneath the surface, think that children should carry guns, criminals should be punished with death, cities are awful, personal freedom is the only freedom, etc. yada yada.  The gun control thing is one of the more annoying aspects of the comic.  The mom and the dad have an argument about giving the kid a gun, and four pages later, the kid saves the mom's life with the gun.  Come on, Robert Kirkman, can't we leave politics out of the zombie apocalpyse so we can all enjoy the brain eating fun?

Lastly, apocalypse fiction is typically a little bit right of center.  Since a mainstay is the idea that without the strong arm of the law, chaos would reign, it follows that the heroes of such epics must be strong arms themselves.  Else how would they create order and safety in the Post-Apocalyptic world?  I object to this notion.  As anyone who reads Gods of Dark, or my politics blog, Ravingleftatic will know.  I'm essentially an optomist who believes in the good that men do.  And I think I have all of human history to prove me right.  Atrocity is NOT the norm.  Yes, the poor citizens of Syria are getting murdered by their government, but the history of the world is moving away from mobilized warfare to local, smaller stages.  I think this is a point in my direction.

I love Apocalypse fiction too, but for a different reason.  I like the survival aspect, the rebuilding aspect, the isolation aspect.  There are so many people in this world, what a strange thing it would be if you woke up one morning and the entire city was empty?  Not because I hate or distrust people, but because think of the wealth of wonderful people, personal histories destroyed.  I think about Pompeii sometimes, and how an entire civiliation was extinguished in mere moments.  There were husbands and wives, and children, and politics and crime, and love, and desire, all the elements of human drama, all gone, in an instant.  Thinking about those extinguished lives, and stories is why I love the genre, not from a fundamental belief that Hobbes was right and that the lives of men really are, nasty brutish and short.