‘The Walking Dead: Compendium One’ review
By Brittney MacDonald, Life & Style Editor
2/5
If you love zombies and have existed within society for the past few years, you’ve likely heard about The Walking Dead. The award-winning television show began as a successful comic series written by Robert Kirkman and featuring art by a plethora of talented contributors including Charlie Adlard, Cliff Rathburn, and Tony Moore. Though I was mildly interested in the show, issues with the narrative voice prevented me from getting too deep into the comic series.
The book begins with Rick Grimes waking up from a coma, then follows him through his journey in finding his family and leading a group of survivors to safety, or as safe a place as he can find. The group first stops at an idyllic farm, which then gives way to an abandoned prison once it becomes apparent that something a little more fortified might be needed to keep the brain-hungry masses at bay.
Writing-wise, my biggest issue with this series is the way in which exposition is narrated. Countless times I found that characters often narrated their current or future actions. As an example, a group of the characters encountered a truck that they wanted to use, so they stood in the middle of an abandoned road and painstakingly went through each step verbally before making any physical effort towards checking out the truck. As a reader, it was like having the world’s most boring ESP.
The art was really engaging and featured a high contrast ratio that seemed to accentuate the drama of the storyline. But there were issues with consistency, probably because there were so many artists involved.
Overall, I probably won’t read any more from this title, but I might recommend it to fans of the show looking for their between-seasons fix.
