Amph The Walking Dead: New Episode Tonight

The Graphic Novel

The New TV Series, created by Frank Darrabont

 

Just to clarify: it is not a graphic novel. A novel ends. The Walking Dead is an ongoing serial. It's, what, 80 issues in or so and feels like it's just getting started.

That said: it's good fun. Way better than Kirkman's crap for Marvel. Though as far as Kirkman goes I think I prefer Invincible.

And I can't wait for the show. AMC has been doing a bang-up job with its original programming. And while I generally don't care for Darabont, the buzz from the creators of this show is really great. The first season, which is essentially a 5-hour pilot movie split across 6 episodes, follows the first arc of the book, and should be fantastic. But it sounds like they're not limiting themselves to sticking too close to the book.

The only concern I have is that in the promo poster for the show the cast looks too clean for a band of zombie apocalypse survivors!

 

AMC has indeed being doing very well with its original programming.

 

Trailer

 

Huh. Apparently AMC has already renewed the show for Season 2, so I guess they have some confidence in its performance.

 

Awesome. My biggest fear with this show would be that it would fail to catch an audience and be quietly canceled. Things are looking up!

 

Horror writer Jay Bonansinga is writing a trilogy of novels (which will, however, be "conceptualize[d] and outline[d]" by Kirkam) set in the Walking Dead universe. No word yet on whether that means the TV show universe or the comics universe or whether they're going to cleave close enough that there's little difference. (Or maybe they'll pull a Blade Runner and make the novels pull from both.)

Also no word on whether the novels will be "further adventures" of the main characters, or will focus on different survivors in that world. I'm hoping for the latter. But then again, it doesn't matter because I probably won't read them unless I hear really good things.

 

AMC has released a 17 minute making of documentary for the pilot episode. This will probably wind up on the eventual DVD release but its cool that they made it available now. I'm at work so I haven't had a chance to watch it but it should be interesting. 20 days to go!

 

10-11:30PM | AMC
The Walking Dead

"Frank Darabont's zombie apocalypse series. Stay tuned for our full review next week...unless the zombies eat your brains first!"

 

This show is going to be a blast, I just know it. Can't wait, 10pm cannot come any sooner. Is this the first time there has ever been a zombie show?

 

Poor, poor horsey......

 

"Zombieland" was originally written as a tv pilot.

"Walking Dead" seems pretty darn good. A little bit of emerging soap opera drama, some zombie movie cliches, but those are almost impossible to avoid, a few unlikely coincidences. The wife and lover are going to have to explain why they abandoned their spouse/partner in the hospital.

I was really impressed by the father's relationship with his zombie wife. Very well done. Didn't need another zombie movie hero waking up in a hospital "28 days later".

And I really thought the horse was going to become a central character in the show.

 

Oh man this show was a blast. Truly is one of my new favorite shows. It's about time they made a zombie show.

 

Not a fan of the zombie genre, but this was a wonderfully written Pilot. I think I'll be tuning into this every weeek.

 

Episode 2 was good. The Walking Dead is my pick as the finest dramatic zombie television series ever made.

There are so many smaller and larger "borrows" from other zombie movies that I suspect some of them may not even be intentional. It doesn't matter much. The end result is very effective. If there's one thing I've learned about safety, it's that if you're going to chop up a zombie, bystanders need to be wearing their safety goggles too to avoid eye splashes, not just the axe wielder. The 28 Days Later rule applies - one drop of infected blood in the eye is all it takes.

 

yeah, i thought that part was kind of sloppy. but overall i'm trying not to be too critical and to just enjoy the show for what it is. i've seen a lot of people online nitpicking every little detail and i can't see the point in that.

 

We don't necessarily know that. That was just the characters being careful. If the show uses the same rules as the comic it is very different from 28 Days Later. In the comic everyone is already "infected". If you die, even if you aren't bit, you still become a zombie. The bites just kill you and speed the process along. There is no hope for anyone. In fact, the title "The Walking Dead" actually refers to the survivors and not the zombies.

 

The Zombie Apocalypse will be Google Mapped

 

Earlier rumors aside, they have ordered a 13-episode second season now. Yay!

The only two concerns I have with the show are:

1) The acting is a bit sketchy. But I bet that'll get better as the characters get more into their roles. It usually does. (Also the ~15 year age difference between the sisters is kind of weird. Within the bounds of feasibility, but if they were going to go for an older Andrea they could have done better casting on Amy.)

2) The Lost problem -- I fear that these people will always be too clean and pretty. Some holes in your jeans are not enough to convince me you've been living out of a trailer in a field for several weeks.

Those minor nitpicky things aside, they've done a pretty stupendous job with the show so far. Unfortunately, having read the book, I keep wanting the plot to move along faster to the really awesome bits!

 

Darth-Lando, your blacked out text is good news, if the series uses it. Perhaps I shouldn't have read that if it's a plot point to be revealed later, but it is a very nice original take on zombie mythology.

One thing that's a bit puzzling to me in the series is the varying states of decomposition. The Dawn of the Dead remake I thought did a wonderful job with this. The zombie plague wipes out the human race almost instantaneously, and no corpses are coming out of graves, so the zombie population is decomposing together at the same rate, from the same general starting point. This seems like the right approach if there is a viral explanation.

Luckily this show takes place near Atlanta. Chicago is a different story. Zombies should freeze solid in subzero weather. Ridding a place like Chicago of a zombie horde would be a piece of cake. Hold out until there's a lengthy cold spell. A truck towing a wood chipper could dispose of hundreds of zombies in a day. A few people could clear an entire Chicago suburb of undeadsickles in a month.

 

Very good point but I think the show gets around this because we don't know exactly how long the whole zombie situation has been going on. It's been at least a few weeks if not months. The timeline is a bit fuzzy: How long was Rick in a coma? How long after he got shot did the zombies show up? How long did Lori and Carl stay with him before finally giving up? How long was he alone in the hospital.

So you might have some zombies that are a month old who were some of the first wave of infected. (The half-zombie from the first episode springs to mind here.) But then you'll get people who survived the initial outbreak only to finally succumb a few weeks later like the soldier in the tank probably did. And finally there are people like the wife from the first episode who's only been a zombie for a few days and has no visible decomposition yet.