This week Obama recommends “THE WALKING DEAD”
Most of you would have watched AMC’s “The Walking Dead” on TV. Season 2 is airing right now on AMCTV but the graphic novel is a whole different story, literally. As good as the TV storyline is, the graphic novel goes down a whole different path. The characters are mostly the same with the TV version adding a few new ones like Daryll and his brother Merle. The mood, tone and feel of the world is similar but the graphic novel feels a lot more realistic and each page draws you deeper and deeper into the world they’re living in. You feel like you’re right there with Rick & co at they face each new nightmare around the corner.
The greatest thing and the key to the walking dead’s success is that amidst the horror of the undead trying to feast on you, the greatest horror and atrocity are still committed by the living human beings against each other. This is a real reflection of human nature and ultimately good story telling. Zombies are scary but humans can be scarier. You see a part of yourself in the characters and the drama.
The response of the characters to their everyday challenges feels very natural and realistic. You will almost always agree that you would do exactly the same thing or feel the same way if you were the character in that scenario. The graphic novel features very interesting events and settings for these human dramas to play out. The zombies are also more realistic, if there is such a thing as a realistic zombie. In the book, the zombies behave, react and move as zombies should. One thing that pissed me off about the zombies on the TV show was that they were running. Zombies don’t run in the graphic novel. They just stumble around lifelessly and are hopelessly uncoordinated as you would think a being with minimal brain activity would be. I won’t go into too much details as I don’t want to spoil the experience for you.
In any case if you’ve read the novel but haven’t had a chance to watch the show, you’ll find the TV version a bit slow and stretched out but definitely worth watching. And if you’ve only watched the TV show and liked it, please read the novel. I guarantee you will not want to stop reading once you start.
