The Walking Dead Volume 1: Days Gone Bye: Days Gone Bye
February 2013: So . . . it's interesting sometimes to re-read things. Mostly when I do this I love whatever it is just as much as before; sometimes I love it more, but in a different way, depending on how old I am, the different experiences I've had since my last read, etc. But this is one of the rare cases where, due to a bunch of different factors mostly involving the TV show adaptation of The Walking Dead, my re-read of its source material has been colored in a mostly negative light. I definitely remember liking this for the most part (I can never full-on love something this disgusting and depressing), but this time through I found myself annoyed with a bunch of things that I didn't even notice the first time through.
'Days Gone Bye' is the first volume in the seemingly never-ending The Walking Dead comic series. It follows cop Rick Grimes as he wakes up from a coma to find the world has gone to shit while he was sleeping. His hometown is virtually abandoned and destroyed, and the whole place is covered in zombies (most often referred to as 'those things'). Throughout the course of the story, Rick meets random survivors on his way to Atlanta to find his wife and son, but when he gets there, he finds the entire city is chock full of zombies and barely escapes with his life. Luckily, the dude who saved him leads him back to a camp of survivors that just so happens to include his wife and son, along with his ex-partner, Shane. So now he's found his family. From there, Rick has to learn to cope with a different kind of journey -- just surviving in the awful world. At the beginning, he's hopeful and always mentioning to people 'when things get back to normal,' but by the end, he's taking a more pragmatic approach. What if things never get back to normal?
The black and white artwork with its grisly, sinewy detail is effective for conveying the visceral terror the zombies inspire, but the dialogue reads for me as very simplistic. I found myself being constantly annoyed by all the characters this time around. It was also jarring to go back to the source material for the TV show as I'm used to the show's slower pace. The terror is more terrifying on the TV show because they take their time. The opening scenes linger when they play out on the small screen. It takes The Walking Dead pilot forty-five minutes to get to a point that it takes ten minutes to get to in the comic. For the most part, the show actually improves on its source material by giving it more time. I also found that I had mis-remembered what happens at the end of Vol. 1 in the comics. For some reason, I had remembered it as Shane having killed himself, but it was little Carl with his gun, which seems rather melodramatic.
I'm continuing on with my re-read of the first three volumes of this series, and my first read of the volumes after, with a little less enthusiasm. Three stars instead of four.
October 2010: I don't know why I even started this. So horrible and depressing, but once I picked it up, I couldn't look away. I do wish it was in color, though. I really don't like black and white; it's hard for me to concentrate.
[original four-star review]