Weekly Comic Book Review

Review: Every comic book fan knows the feeling. The initial excitement when we hear that a beloved comic is going to be adapted into film or TV show followed by the awful ‘what if they fuck it up??’ feeling.  We’ve had a lot of punches to the gut before where the product was just awful (Daredevil) or the movie was kinda good, but very different than the comic (Wanted).

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been disappointed enough that I almost don’t want to recommend these films/shows to non-comics friends for fear that they’ll suck ass and you’ll end up mumbling, “Yeah, it was bad, but they kinda screwed up what happened in the comic book and missed the whole point of… blah, blah, blah…”

So, I had a lot of fear going into the premiere of The Walking Dead.  Would “they” understand that the comic isn’t really about zombies, but an examination of the human condition?  Would they capture the feeling of loss and family and not-knowing that has made the comic great or would they just have Rick running from zombies?  Would they have enough of an effects budget to make the zombies look good?  Would it seem funny to see TWD in color (since the comic is B&W)?

I needn’t have worried.  The first episode was just flat out awesome.  I LOVED it and it hit all the right notes for me.  But, if you’re making a TV show only for the ~50,000 people in the U.S. who have read every single issue of TWD, your ratings might suck.  The trick is to make something that non-comic fans enjoy and that’s what the TV series did. The real winning moment for me with this show was that my wife loved it too.

She has zero interest in comics, never reads comics I suggest to her, etc…  She knew that I really wanted to watch this show, but made no real effort to be in her seat when the show began.  I was so eager that I didn’t bother to wait, but after she tolerated my “that’s very different than the comic” nerd muttering from the other end of the couch, she loved it too.  AMC might have a real winner on its hands if they can satisfy the two of us!  On a side note, what a winning streak for AMC: Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Rubicon and now TWD.  These sorts of shows are SOOOOO much better than anything you can get on network TV.

The plot for the pilot episode is ripped straight from the comics and is simple enough.  Rick Grimes is a small town sheriff’s deputy who is shot on duty, goes into a coma and awakens in a trashed hospital with nothing but zombies.  He briefly seeks shelter with a man and his son who are living in one of his neighbor’s homes before setting off for Atlanta in hopes of finding his wife and son.  Probably one of the things making this show “work” is that the plot is just that simple.

There are only a few actors who have much of a role in this pilot and Andrew Lincoln just nails it as Rick.  He looks the part and within several minutes my eyes (which have gazed upon every page of TWD) and ears had accepted him as Rick.  We’ll have to wait and see how Lincoln does with “angry Rick” and “crazy Rick” but he sells “distraught-and-confused Rick” very nicely.  The actors playing Morgan and Duane also did well, but it took me a bit longer to accept them.  The only outlier from a casting standpoint was Jon Bernthal as Shane.  I always thought of Shane as a big, kinda redneck boy and not someone who is ruggedly non-WASPy like Bernthal.  I’ve enjoyed Bernthal in other stuff he’s done and there is no rule that says everyone MUST look just like they do in the comic, so we’ll see…

The production values were also excellent.  If you worried that the zombies might look like they do in low-budget zombie flicks, put that fear aside.  These are grade-A Hollywood zombies.  On top of that, the whole pilot was nicely shot.  Everything is cinematic.  Everything looks great in HD.  Never has brain splatter from a zombie looked so nice on your TV screen.  The shoot-out scene at the beginning was also really well done and that bodes well for a few other key moments in the future of this show.

If you’re reading this review on THIS website, you’re probably a comic fan and wondering “what’s the same” and “what’s different.”  There aren’t so many things that were different about this episode, but it was kind of like watching the “deleted scenes” from the first issue or two of TWD.  The biggest addition is we get a LOT more of Shane’s character.  In the comic, we don’t meet Shane until Rick finds the other survivors, but here we see a lot of Shane before the zombies take over, his friendship with Rick and we also get a glimpse of his relationship with Lori (Rick’s wife).  I actually like that they just came out and made it explicit that Lori and Shane are romantically involved.  The comics just kind of noodled around this subject for awhile and I think this will sell the tension between Shane and Rick much better when Rick shows up at the survivor camp.

The other big change was a greater fleshing out of Morgan and Duane.  In the comics, we barely see them and Morgan is mostly a plot device to explain “what has happened.”  But here we get to see a lot more of him and his family, including his zombified wife (who seems to have memories of her home and knows how to work doorknobs).  We also stick with Morgan’s character after he and Rick part ways.  It’ll be interesting to see if “they” keep flashing back to Morgan in the further episodes because us comic fans know that he didn’t show up again for ~50 issues.

But, the BIG difference in this episode was THE HELICOPTER.  TWD fans know that there was a helicopter, but it happens around issue 30 or so.  Thus it is very unclear if this is the same helicopter, or perhaps the show’s creators are hustling the story along or whether it is something wholly new.  I saw the helicopter and took it to be Kirkman and company basically say, “Hey fanboy!  You actually don’t know what is going to happen next, so stop muttering about ‘what was different’ in the comics and just enjoy the TV show!”

And I will…..

Conclusion: I actually would have been surprised if the creative team involved had managed to screw this show up: Robert Kirkman, AMC and Frank Darabont.  But, we’ve all seen stranger things happen.  Now that we know the show is/will be good, we can all encourage our friends to watch it and enjoy the rest of this first season.  It should be great!  This pilot episode was the most enjoyable session of television I’ve watched this TV season (including Mad Men).

Grade: A

- Dean Stell

Random Side Notes:

*Interesting that they open with a flash-forward with the little girl (not from comic).  Odd that they had the little girl picking up a teddy bear.

*”Based on the series of graphic novels by….”

*Building up Shane’s character a lot more than in comics.  Also building tension b/w Rick & Lori…

*Gun miscue: Rick tells guy to turn safety off on Glock.

*Good shootout scene with rednecks!

*Interesting that they added Shane visiting in the hospital. I really like that they’re playing up their friendship.

*Wall clocks have batteries.  What was Rick eating/ drinking during coma (at least they showed him drinking like crazy from sink).

*Great makeup on eaten nurse in hallway of hospital.  Creepy scene in stairwell (omitted wrestling with zombie in hospital).  Added piles of dead bodies outside.  Added military presence in hometown.  GREAT bike zombie!  Like that they got the shovel to the head in there!

*I like that they’re fleshing out Morgan’s character, and the added whole section on Morgan & his wife. I also liked how they didn’t just drop his character after Rick and Morgan get out of the police station.

*Interesting that they made Lori & Shane’s relationship explicit right away.

*New element: Helicopter????  Rick hiding in the tank?

Filed under: Image Comics Tagged: | Dean Stell, review, The Walking Dead, The Walking Dead AMC, The Walking Dead pilot, The Walking Dead recap, The Walking Dead review, The Walking Dead TV series, TV