Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Robert Kirkman's Walking Dead

Although I'm not a fan of Marvel Zombies (I realize I'm in the minority here, but while I love superheroes and I love zombies, for the most part I find that those are two great tastes that don't taste great together), I was happy to see Robert Kirkman receive the award for Best Comic Book for Marvel Zombies at Spike TV's 2006 Scream Awards this week... especially since he was the writer of two of the series nominated: Marvel Zombies and The Walking Dead (the other three nominees were All-Star Superman, Ex Machina, and Civil War).

While the Marvel Zombies series doesn't do anything for me (except for the covers... those are hilarious), Walking Dead is one of my all-time favorite comics. It also has the distinction of being the only series that I've only read in trade paperback format; knowing how much more I enjoy sitting down with an entire story-arc, I've avoided buying or reading any single issues, no matter how great the temptation.

Described by Kirkman as "the zombie movie that never ends," I think Walking Dead would make an awesome television series. Forget Jericho... post-apocalyptic scenarios are missing a crucial element if there aren't any undead stumbling around the landscape.

PopCultureShock.com interviewed Kirkman after the Scream Awards, claiming (and I assume they're correct) that this was the first time a comic book award was ever televised. You can check out the video on GooTube. Pictured above are the Walking Dead Torso Statuettes (click to enlarge) from The CS Moore Studio, due out in 2007. They're also planning a statue of the series' protagonist, Rick Grimes, based on the sketch to the left.

The long-awaited fifth Walking Dead trade, The Best Defense, was released at the end of last month (as I noted on Z Week), despite reports that it had been pushed back to December.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Yep... Walking Dead has gone from "That should be interesting to read one day..." to MUST BUY. I don't know if I'm going to be able to resist buying the single issues, despite agreeing with you 100% about this story working so much better in trade paperback form.

After reading the first four trades of Walking Dead, I was set to proclaim it the best comic currently on the market (excepting Astro City that is? isn't? on the market at this current time). However, the fifth trade paperback stumbled a WEE bit in my estimation. This volume moved the story away from a very realistic portrayal of a group of people trying to hold on to their lives and their sanity while at the same time forming a new society, and introduced a defacto supervillain that for me was just a bit too over the top (for a post-apocalyptic zombie comic, that's saying something). The new villain was just one notch too stylized for the realism this comic has thus far achieved.

That said, it's still on the top of my list.