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| IMAGE FIRSTS: THE WALKING DEAD No. 1, April 2014 |
There isn’t really much more that can be said
about the comic book phenomenon “The Walking Dead”, a zombie apocalypse series,
printed in black and white, and created by Robert Kirkland and Tony Moore. Its
first issue was published in 2003 and only had a print run of just 7,300 copies.
As a result, such is the magazine’s scarcity and the franchise’s popularity,
that a single mint edition can fetch $10,000; at least that was the price tag
of a 9.9 graded Certified Guaranty Company issue in 2012.
Fortunately, because
of its astounding popularity, “Image Comics” have since made the book available
again under its “Image Firsts” label; a $1 reprinting of the first issues of
some of its best-selling titles which has been designed to allow unfamiliar readers
to try out “a variety of new series without feeling the effects on their
wallet.” So now more than ever there is no excuse not to take those first
tentative steps through the corridors and wards of Harrison Memorial Hospital
with officer Rick Grimes…
And a very personal trip it is too as Kirkland
quickly creates a connection between the reader and the man ‘just looking for
his wife and kid’. Whether injured in a shoot-out, wandering through deserted
and derelict streets or hopelessly searching his marital home, absolutely
nothing happens in this first issue without the cop being present and us
sharing his confusion, anguish and fear.
Another clever writing technique
employed by the “Image Comics” partner is to not actually feature that many
zombies in the story. Indeed, even when Grimes inadvertently blunders into the
hospital cafeteria, a place filled to the rafters with the living dead, it is
only really one of the walking corpses which causes the disorientated policeman
any real danger… and so goes the rest of the officer’s ghoulish encounters,
whether it be the putrefying cyclist or the ‘walker’ outside the police
station. Both confrontations are unnerving but not especially dangerous.
Instead the storyline is all about people, their behaviour and reactions to one another,
and how, together, they will face the horrifically changed landscape of the
world around them.
Fortunately American comic book artist Tony Moore does a
superb job of capturing all this emotion with some stunning pencil work, such
as when a distraught Grimes breaks down having just taken a gurgling zombie’s
pushbike. In addition, in this modern age of colour, the inker’s brave use
of just gray tones, nobly assisted by Cliff Rathburn, really helps capture the sombre mood of the weird world the
officer has woken up into. It makes everything all that more depressing and
wearisome, and emphasises the survivors sense of hopelessness at the possible
prospect of having to now just survive living day by day, hour by hour.
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| Creator, Writer and Letterer: Robert Kirkman, and Artist: Tony Moore |
