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The Walking Dead: Compendium One

by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Cliff Rathburn

“I'm using this compendium as a stand-in for the series as a whole. I'm an avowed lover of all things zombie, but the zombies themselves are just a cipher, a blank slate upon which we can write any and all sorts of worries. But The Walking Dead isn't about the zombies. It's about the people, about the life left after most life is gone. Kirkman takes what could otherwise be a bland story of a zombie apocalypse and instead turns it into a story of survival, a story of what it means to be human in a world where humanity has largely ceased to exist. I can only hope that in similar circumstances I would be the mostly stand up guy Rick Grimes is for most of the series. As I watched the horrors of this new dead world slowly eat away at Rick's (and the other survivors) humanity, a small savage part of me cheered on his descent, and reveled when he exacted revenge on those who harmed the people he loved. And this is what Kirkman does best; he reveals the savagery lurking underneath every civilized exterior, and makes us all question what it really is that keeps us on the straight and narrow.”