Movies / Home Theatre

The Walking Dead: Is the TV Adaptation Better Than the Comic Books?

By Dan Horn
December 5, 2011 - 17:05

How far does the undead apple fall from the undead tree?

In 2010 and into 2011, I was deployed to the USMC's Camp Leatherneck in the secluded Camp Bastion NATO airfield, the main allied operations base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. For all I knew, I was on another planet, what with the incessantly swirling moon-dust of the barren Helmand landscape and the intemperate heat of summer and cold of winter. The overall experience itself is a story for another time, however. This is a pop culture blog and I happen to have an appropriate agenda in starting this examination of the television series The Walking Dead and its source material in the deserts of Afghanistan. Please, bear with me.

I was very lucky, when I think of my time in Afghanistan when compared to the tours of my brothers in arms who have suffered through so much worse in theater. In my case, boredom was the most apparent enemy during the deployment. As a collector and avid reader, comic book withdrawal made the often sleepless nights long and excruciatingly dull. In response to a subtle request on my part, my fiancé's father began sending me assorted comics from a discounted comic lot he had purchased from a bookstore. This was my metaphorical Nicorette. It curbed my cravings, but even so, the books I was receiving from that collection were things like the strange, now-obscure Marvel book Death's Head and the Superboy title that spun out of the 1988 TV series. They did in a pinch, serving almost solely to give me my sequential art fix. Still, I needed more. Later, my soon-to-be father-in-law mailed several CDs of electronic comic books, which I read on my constantly overheating laptop, that adequately satiated my intellectual voracity. I fell in love with Brian Q. Miller's Batgirl and Marjorie Liu's X-23 in Afghanistan, books I most likely wouldn't have read otherwise. I was reintroduced to Captain Marvel's mind-bending era of psychedelia. I reread Jeph Loeb's Long Halloween and read much of Geoff Johns' post-"Rebirth" Green Lantern (which I'm still not too fond of).

On my birthday, I received a package from my fiancé that contained several volumes of Image Comics' The Walking Dead. At this point I was ecstatic. I had never bought into The Walking Dead craze, but not because I'm one of those jaded cynics that says zombie fiction has all been done before. Maybe it has, but I'm a zombie-horror junky at heart. 28 Days Later, Romero's original Night of the Living Dead, the comedy-horror Shaun of the Dead, and the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead rank among some of my favorite films. However, I'm a discerning fan of the genre; the not-so-discerning zombie fanatics can keep Romero's less inspired works and the straight to video fare. But, the reason I'd never been sold on The Walking Dead was that I'd never been sold on its writer, Robert Kirkman. I'd honestly not read anything that he'd written that I could deem, with a clear conscience, truly inspired. The hype surrounding his zombie epic definitely piqued my interest, though, and I was eager to dig into the first volume. Sure, hype is always a dubious barometer for these sorts of things, but what did I have to lose but time--time that stood between me and homecoming?

WARNING: the following contains some spoilers

The first thing that was glaringly apparent in my first reading of "Days Gone Bye" was Kirkman's liberal "borrowing" of content from a film that I've already mentioned, 28 Days Later, which now has its own comic book series spin-off. For those who aren't familiar with Danny Boyle's survival-horror opus, the film follows a man who wakes from a coma in a London hospital to find that England has been ravaged by the "rage" epidemic, turning most of the British populous into mindless, gore-vomiting cannibals. Sound pretty familiar? Take nearly that entire premise, strip away Big Ben, and add some Georgia colloquialisms and Southern iconography, like the rural county sheriff in the smokey-bear, and you've got Kirkman's The Walking Dead, which was first released by Image Comics in October 2003, approximately four months after 28 Days Later first hit theaters. It occurred to me that Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic book series was not developed to much substance, and was a pale American reflection of the brilliant Boyle film that sparked the most recent pop-cultural fad of zombie-centric media. It was a Halloween cash-in for Image, and an effective one at that, spawning a lucrative franchise.

It's a fun story nonetheless, with gorgeous Tony Moore artwork and no shortage of entertainment value, but it's hampered by clunky dialogue and shallow characters (we really hardly know anything about most of the survivors beyond their exterior interactions after the first two volumes besides those most closely associated with main character Rick Grimes). Hell, even Rick is something of a cipher who sheds an occasional tear at Kirkman's behest in ineffective attempts at developing Rick's personality. The character of Shane, Rick's best friend and the man that took care of Rick's family (including a sexual affair with Rick's wife while Rick was in a coma and presumed dead), was what really drew me in. The tension between Shane and Rick was growing more and more palpable throughout the first few issues, and it was this dynamic that seemed to purport the most promising developments for the series in the future. So, what does Kirkman decide to do with all this potential? Shane goes berserk in the sixth issue of the comic book series, and is shot to death by Rick's young son, Carl. It's a powerful scene, but also shortsighted in  the long haul, a desperate and untimely grab at readership.

Without the Shane drama, subsequent story arcs are more than a bit boring. It really takes quite a long while for the comic book series to get into its groove, where characters are properly developed and the scope of the series broadens. This fact leads me to believe the initial success of the series can be strictly attributed to people who are willing purchase without regard for quality anything zombie related and the word-of-mouth hype-machine that demographic created. Let's take a look at the Twilight films for example: god-awful movies by almost any standard and panned critically nearly across the board, yet the Twilight faithful remain the Twilight faithful for the sake of identity, I assume--why else would you watch that juvenile shit? (says the man writing about zombies)--and embark on a tireless recruitment campaign for the Twilight movement. It's affected the Twilight franchise monumentally. I don't know that any film could currently compete financially with a Twilight release other than an installment of another similarly successful, billion-dollar franchise like the Dark Knight or Pirates of the Caribbean. The zombie faithful are perhaps a slightly less galvanized bunch, but their influence on The Walking Dead's meteoric rise can't be ignore.

I understand that pointing out the mediocrity that hamstrings The Walking Dead early on is a critique of the comic book series that's sure to earn me some vilification from the die-hard Robert Kirkman fan club, but doesn't hasty, vitriolic defense of a work of zombie fiction just kind of prove my point here? I mean, I was making an earnest attempt to overlook Kirkman's shortcomings in scripting. This was one of the very scant sources of entertainment that I had at the time I'd first read "Days Gone Bye" and "Far Behind Us," but those first volumes are so half-baked, the inattentiveness to detail eclipses any real value of the story. I was truly trying to like The Walking Dead and was only ending up utterly blase in regards to the experience.

However, before the wildly enraged responses begin pouring in, I want to point out that I stuck with the comic book, and I'm really enjoying it right now. It's matured from a simple rip-off to a series that really has it's own two legs to stand on. And maybe that's why the first two seasons of The Walking Dead television adaptation on AMC have done such a fine job of overshadowing the growing pains of the source material.

AMC's The Walking Dead is every bit the character study that Robert Kirkman had intended his comic book series to be from the beginning. Insightful, introspective, and, most importantly, propelled by the survivors' collective and personal dynamics, the TV program attains noticeably darker depths than its graphical counterpart. In my book, that's definitely a pro--perhaps the only pro it really needs. It's a mature, intellectual, and human story, which the comic books could hardly be accused of in 2003 and 2004. Of course comic book medium detractors would certainly attribute the disconnect between source and adaptation to the comic book's inability to convey those mature theme's effectively, but how naive can people possibly be? The derogatory stigma that hounds the words "comic book" is incredibly tiresome, given the wealth of literary and artistic value the medium has contributed to society in the last three decades alone. The disconnect isn't the medium, but the writing, and I see the changes made to the story as Robert Kirkman's way of saying, "Yeah, I screwed up and have always wished I could take this back or add this here. So here it is." It's the director's hindsight cut, the story he wished he had written.

Speaking of changes to the saga, the television series' propensity for liberal alterations to Kirkman's original plot has drawn heat and accolades alike from fandom. I fall on the latter side of the fence, applauding these changes, most of all keeping Shane alive. All of the brilliant moments from the live action show to which Shane has contributed only verify my suspicions that his abortive demise in the comics was an immense misstep in plotting. Seriously, the man practically makes the show worth watching on his own. The mere fact that he's still around for Lori's pregnancy makes for some incredibly intense character moments.

Lending depth to Adrea and Amy's relationship before Amy's death, including Merrill and Darrell, and the ultimate fate of Sophia, Carol's little girl, on Hershel's farm (not to mention the interesting and significant changes to the story of Hershel's farm itself) are all examples of similarly effective tweaks to the original material. Let's discuss the example of Hershel's farm for a moment, and I'll try to make my case from that. In the comic books, Hershel became an overtly patriarchal madman, spouting off things like "You've run your mouth long enough, woman!" and other equally eye roll-inducing articulations. Kirkman wanted so badly to write diverse and sympathetic characterizations--he wanted to write real people--but he just didn't have the insight needed for the task. He ended up fostering many unrealistic and incongruous stereotypes. In the second season of the tv series, Hershel is a sympathetic man, bolstered by blind faith and closed-mindedness, but convicted by his own compassion. In many ways he reminds me of my grandparents, subtle racism and all. He honestly could be the fictional avatar for most Christians, and by the midseason finale, The Walking Dead still hasn't made a definitive statement on whether Hershel is "good" or "bad," though the viewer's heart goes out to him in the end nonetheless. And that's what makes the television series so spectacular. It's not nearly so black-and-white, figuratively nor literally, as its source material. It questions the certainty of morality in societal collapse and messes about with ambiguous heroics. Hell, we truly can't even call Shane a "villain," just a troubled man who's fit for survival in the given circumstances. The series raises questions about the moral implications of survival, not mere survival alone.

There's also been quite a bit of criticism hurled toward the television show's lengthy story arcs, however. Hearing some of the complaints, like ones aimed toward this most recent season's dilated search for Sophia, got me to thinking: The survivors on Lost were stuck on an enigmatic island for several years before being rescued, and even then, they returned to the island! Talk about a prolonged engagement. Of course this comparison will undoubtedly elicit some groans from Lost detractors, but, however you felt about the series' lukewarm ending, if you watched the show for any length of time, you felt a real connection with its characters. Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and the rest of the gang were people, not roles filled by actors. We knew them in what felt like a very personal way and  we wanted to know even more about them.

You see, good character study is a slow cooked provocation that, much like the best chili, takes some investment of time from the consumer/preparer alike. Sure, the survivors of The Walking Dead seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time searching for Sophia, but the length of the search gave the survivors more opportunity for crucial interaction and made the payoff all the more gut-wrenching. There's no shortage of thrills along the way, but substance is most obviously the paramount goal here. To truly benefit from the work, you have to be in it for the long haul. That is the nature of the proverbial beast. If character study really isn't your thing, tune in to CSI or some other one-crime-a-week franchise, or, if you prefer your character dramas a bit less comprehensive, I suggest reading Robert Kirkman's comic books.

Last Updated: November 29, 2025 - 16:51