The Walking Dead: Days Gone Bye v. 1

The Walking Dead is a family/love story under the backdrop of zombies. What else can anyone ask for?

As hackneyed and clichéd as the zombie genre of, well anything, can be, one cannot help but be enthralled by the rising dead. The fascination of zombies transcends many cultural barriers with examples of rising hordes of the undead in biblical and ancient text. But, it wasn’t until films such as Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead in which the main characters were pitted against a legion of zombies that the genre really took off.

With many films after Romeo’s “dead movies” trying to capture a bit of the limelight with little success, the genre began to fall into the tacky and campy. While this review is not of the evolution of where zombies have arisen from, it gives a good context to what makes The Walking Dead so interesting. After main character Rick wakes up from a coma in a deserted hospital he learns that not only the hospital, but the entire city is desolate. Seeking his family, friends and old lifestyle, Rick learns that the world he woke up in is rendered in the post-apocalyptic. Buildings damaged, bodies everywhere, and thousands and thousands of cars deserted, leaving escape by vehicle nearly impossible.

What makes The Walking Dead so interesting are the interactions between the survivors. Disputes over food, weapons and in some cases love, propel this story beyond any zombie tale ever told. It is a must read for any fan of horror or the undead. While I mentioned the undead all too much in this review, zombies are at times few and far between in this story, because of that reason it becomes all the more suspenseful. The antagonist in the story is usually never a zombie and may in fact be the love torn friend or the power hungry companion. So, the reader is almost as surprised as the characters are when a zombie pops up out of nowhere. Please, read, enjoy and remember that sometimes no one is safe. Not even Rick. Or You!