The Dead are Walking back onto the small screen
WHEN a season of The Walking Dead ends, I usually go back to my stash of graphic novels to continue with the story. It is withdrawal symptoms, yes, but if you gave this show a chance, or if you have been watching it, you will understand.
One thing that is commendable about the titles (print and TV) is that they are penned by the incredible Robert Kirkman. The cherry on top is that the two platforms do not necessarily follow one another, so you can enjoy them independently.
With the announcement that the next season is starting tonight, naturally the graphic novels will have to take a back seat.
When we last saw the show, the group of survivors led by Rick Grimes (played by Andrew Lincoln) came under a new threat. We had thought that after defeating the Governor, there would never be another adversary as bad, but we were wrong. Given that we were left on a cliffhanger the last time we watched The Walking Dead, we did not have a clear picture of who was attacking them this time. What was clear was that some of the principal characters were likely not going to make it for the rest of this new season.
This is typical of Kirkman who is the master of twisted story arcs that keep us on the edge of our seat. The one thing that we were warned about from the first episode was to not fall for any of the characters on this show. If you followed that advice then you’ll agree that it helps because no one is safe.
When you read the title, The Walking Dead, you’d think that it refers to the zombies (which are corpses roaming around), but as Kirkman explains later, it is the humans who walk with death marked on their backs who carry that title. It is quite clever in that it is not about only zombies that eat people, but about people hurting each other to stay alive. More than anything, this show is an analysis of what is likely to happen should the world come to an end. Zombies are just the escape to justify the anarchy, but if you look closely, they are not the real threat, people are.
The same goes for the world we live in today. If we still lived in the jungle, you’d be surprised that the main threat to your life would not be the snake or the lion, it would be the human. This is what Kirkman is exploiting in his storylines.
However, there is a down side to this in the comics. Right at the end readers get to write in and say how they feel about the story. One writer complained about how slow things can be in the storytelling. The same can be said for TV. There are times when Kirkman takes his time to get to the point, (you can’t hurry art), but it hurts the enthusiasm of the viewer if all we see are long, quiet scenes. That can be exhausting.
The Walking Dead season 7 premieres tonight on Fox (DStv channel 125) at 9pm.