Walking Dead and Substance Over Hype
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Due to a combination of being incredibly busy at my day job and trying to keep up with books that have 
been very very hyped (and very very disappointing), my stack of unread issues of Walking Dead has been growing. Then I overheard some people talking about what happened in the latest issue - just general expressions of shock, no particulars - and it was enough to get me to make sure to read issues 44-49 as soon as I got home.
Now I truly feel that these issues are most effective if you don’t see any of it coming, so I’m going to avoid spoilers or hype beyond saying that when Kirkman said nobody is safe, he meant NOBODY IS SAFE, MOTHERFUCKERS! I believed him when he said that, but I had no idea how far he was willing to take it.
Let me tell you folks, he took it almost as far as it could possibly be taken.
I think that’s about as much as I can say without really getting into spoilers, so I’ll just close this part down by saying if you’re not reading Walking Dead, head to your local comic store or book store or Amazon or wherever you like, pick up the trades, fall in love with these characters like I have, and then prepare to have your heart ripped out of your chest and watch Robert Kirkman eat it in front of you.
I realize that there are alot of people who don’t like horror comics in general or zombie books in particular and thus avoid this stuff like the plague, but the point of Walking Dead is not the zombies at all. The setting could just as easily be post-apocalypse America or any other setting that features the breakdown of our society and allows us to examine how the human race behaves when all the rules are thrown out of the window and we have to - in theory - rely on each-other to survive in a harsh environment.
Seriously, check it out.
On another note, I was thinking about how awesome Walking Dead and a few other relatively low-hype books have been at about the same time as RJP made a post on Between The Staples about his disappointment that Final Crisis hasn’t been nearly as “well”-hyped as Secret Invasion. Thinking about those two ideas made me realize that, as of late, quality has seemingly been inversely proportionate to hype and (in my eyes) bullshitting of the audience in comics.
As evidence, I present the awesomeness of stories like Sinestro Corps War, Annihilation, Annihilation: Conquest, Walking Dead, or Planet Hulk (which I didn’t even really hear about until it was almost over and WWH was being hyped) that were very under-hyped in comparison to disappointments like World War Hulk, House of M, Countdown, Miss Marvel, or the first issue of Secret Invasion.
I realize that many will say that it’s very hard to live up to the hype that some of these “events” received, but who’s responsible for the hype? The publishers! Don’t hype quality that you can’t deliver on. This goes right along with not twisting the truth, outright lying, or bullshitting the public, which also happens way too often.
I’m starting to understand why so many people only read independent comics.
Want to blow me away, publishers? Spend more time on developing these ideas and bringing out quality product and less time hyping crap product.
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Comments
That surprises me.
I could see someone dropping a comic like The Boys for being too extreme and graphic, but not Walking Dead.
I guess I just don’t see Walking Dead as extreme rather than just being very blunt and not sugar-coating anything. In that situation, people are generally not going to die of natural causes.
I see the book as not pulling any punches about that fact, but not really extreme.
But to each their own, I suppose. It’s definitely not a fluffy bunny story, unless those bunnies are dinner.
Is this book really that good? I mean even for someone who HATES Zombies?
Not that I can afford another book but so many ppl are reading this I wonder. Then again the same amount read Y The Last Man and I couldn’t stand that series.
My big thing about the top publishers and their big event books, why not go over the top with the hype? Marvel has shown that they had done that better in comparison to DC’s lackluster around Final Crisis. Does it make the book better?! No but good / bad, it keeps the idea of the event in one’s mind.
I agree and mentioned and talked of Annihilation for quite a while. I love that fact that this series / event has been the best Marvel event with little to no hype… that said — Annihilation is NOT the event of the summer for Marvel. Final Crisis IS the event of the summer for DC.
Anyways. Walking Dead. Maybe I need to check out a trade but I really dread reading Zombie stories.
Considering entire arcs go by where you don’t even see a zombie, I’d say check it out. Zombies factor into the beginning of the series, and they may play a larger part in future issues, but they haven’t really been a factor for at least the last… 20 issues or so. Like I said, the zombies aren’t really the point of the story at all.
As a matter of fact, in the shocker that everyone’s talking about from this last issue, not a single person was killed by a zombie and the zombies didn’t even rate more than a mention as an obstacle some people had to get past.
Give it a try sometime and keep in mind that the zombies aren’t the point; they could just as easily be an occupying foreign army that’s been slaughtering Americans. Actually, it doesn’t even matter that they’re in America.
Also, I kinda see your point about hype, but I’ve reached the point of cynicism where I feel like the more hype there is, the more crap they’re trying to compensate for.
I haven’t been proven wrong yet.
Walking Dead is fucking genius.
The most recent arc was unbelievably intense, and I loved every page.
I love Walking Dead for being so absolutely merciless. (Sounds like you feel the same way.) And issue #48 took that mercilessness farther than ever before.
The same thing is apparently turning other people off to the book. Had a buddy tell me last week that he left the title because it’s basically too extreme. Harrumph.