THE WALKING DEAD: COMPENDIUM ONE by: Robert Kirkman
SUMMARY
The story/graphic novel begins with deputy sheriff Rick Grimes and his best friend, Shane. They are in a shoot-out with an escaped prisoner on a highway. Rick gets shot and wakes up from a coma in an hospital. He starts exploring the place and gets to the elevator but when it opens a corpse falls to the floor coming out of the elevator and he also sees a door that’s blocked by a piece of wood. Rick removes the wood and opens the door only to find multiple Zombies inside the room. One of the Zombies lunges itself at Rick and falls to the ground and the Zombies head come off. Rick leaves the hospital and finds a bike. As Rick walk towards the bike he sees a Zombie with only its upper half of its body. Rick grabs the bike and returns to his house to check for his family (Lori and Carl). Exiting his home Rick gets knocked unconscious by a boy (Duane Jones) with a shovel the boys father (Morgan Jones) comes quickly and says to him that Rick is not a Zombie and brings him in their home. Morgan starts explaining to Rick that the whole situation with the Zombies started about a month ago. Rick thought maybe Lori (his wife) would have taken Carl "his son) to Atlanta where her parents live. Rick, Morgan and Duane go to the police department in order to get supplies. Rick gives Morgan and Duane some guns and a police car while changing into some uniforms. Morgan and Duane decided to stay behind while Rick plans to go search for his family in Atlanta. Morgan thanks Rick while Rick advises Morgan to make sure he uses the weapons when necessary and Rick goes to find his family. Rick heads for Atlanta but his car runs out of gas, so he finds a horse and a barn and gallops into Hotlanta like the Lone Ranger. Everyone, even the Real Housewives of Atlanta, are zombies now. Rick's horse is devoured by zombies. Rick almost gets chomped too, but a baseball cap-wearing guy named Glenn finds Rick and leads him out of the city. Glenn takes Rick to a camp, and behold, Lori and Carl are there, along with Rick's partner Shane. Rick and Shane go hunting, the women do laundry, and people generally live a leisurely existence waiting for this whole zombie apocalypse to blow over. Rick suggests moving camp, but Shane refuses, so Rick heads back into Atlanta to get guns and ammo for everyone. Rick and Glenn rub themselves down with zombie blood and gore to mask their own scent, and that shamble right into the gun shop in Atlanta without hassle. Unfortunately, it starts raining when they leave, washing their scent camo off, and they have to run for their lives. Meanwhile, back at camp, Lori slept with Shane when she thought Rick was dead. But she tells Shane that now Rick is back, their affair is over. Glenn and Rick return safely, and Rick teaches everyone, including his seven-year-old, to fire a gun. Lori objects, but Rick thinks it's important for Carl to carry a gun. This is the zombie apocalypse, for Pete's sake. When zombies attack the camp and eat Amy, one of the campers, it's a good thing Carl is packing heat. Lori drops her gun without squeezing off a single shot, and Carl saves her. A man named Jim is also bitten, but he wants to be a zombie to be reunited with his zombie family, so they leave him near Atlanta to "change.” The attack reignites Rick's concern to move the camp. Shane's furious at Rick for basically being alive, and they have a huge argument in the woods. Shane pulls his gun on Rick, saying he doesn't deserve to live. Carl follows them and shoots Shane. The boy's upset because killing a real person is a lot different than killing a zombie. Rick tries to comfort his son as the chapter draws to close.
ANALYSIS: READER’S RESPONSE
The Walking Dead started as a graphic novel series and is still going strong as that. Later, there came a TV Series. Yet, it started with a good medium, in fact, according to Barrs (2014) “This is the first graphic novel I have read, as an adult, and I am overly impressed with the introduction into the genre. This is a great story of horror that has the reader literally sitting on the edge of the seat. What I enjoy most about the Walking dead was the most in the unpredictability of it. Characters can die at any given moment. This creates continued suspense throughout producing a real page turner.” The two share a lot of things including characters, story lines, back stories. However, the two mediums go off into different directions rather quickly and only converge every now and then when a character or circumstance is transported from the graphic novel to the TV series. Both the graphic novel and TV series start out with the main character waking up from a coma to find that he was amidst a zombie apocalypse. His name was Rick Grimes and he was a sheriff. Meanwhile his best friend and his family, believing he was dead, have moved on. The beginning of the story involves his search for them and the lessons that he learns on the way about the new world he has woken up in and it was not easy for him. The Walking Dead was very prone to spoilers, by the fact that the characters, the relationships, and the struggles were very surprising. Moreover, based from my what I have read, The Walking Dead is quite similar to Game of Thrones but in Game of Thrones there were episodes without any supernatural elements. In The Walking Dead, there were episodes with few if any actual zombies. Honestly, I do not watch yet the Game of Thrones that is why I could not agree directly with what I have read but the most important to this analysis, is to give my viewpoint as one of the readers of The walking Dead.
The Walking Dead was a nice graphic novel that later turns into TV series. But the one I am familiar with is only the Compendium One. However, I found it very interesting since it does not only made for leisure time to watch but it brought a great lesson to all when it comes to handling real-life scenario. Rick Grimes, the main character, encountered a great struggle wherein he woke up in the new world with zombies. Sadly, his best friend and his wife thought that he was dead already that is why they had an affair. "Fight the dead, fear the living." The series tagline sounds cynical. Unlike walkers, living human beings have complex motivations. They can lie, cheat, steal, and betray. They can set elaborate traps for diverse reasons", (Langley, T.,2016). I found Rick as loving and responsible husband to his wife and father to his son. The moment he woke up from being coma, he then realized to look for his wife and son without knowing that his best friend and his wife, betrayed him. After knowing that Shane and Lori had an affair, his attitude somehow changed. With this, I could see how the writer made the story became exciting. Honestly speaking, I do really love to watch movies or series that contains more explosive scenes. Thus, this includes the “The Walking dead” wherein the role of the main character spotted in every scene most especially in facing the struggles of the story. The moment how the author wrote the flow of the story was very in a tone of sadness because supposedly Rick must have the happy family to be with after his coma but then he found out that people who were near to his heart, believed that he was gone and so have the confidence to betrayed him. As a viewer/reader, I could relate it to the real-life scenario. Life is full of surprises, the same as Rick, we did not expect that we came into a situation wherein we might ask, what is going on with our life? People may give us the reason to change and so the happening. Yes, Rick is still with his family but the question is, are things still the same to things that were once before? It simply means that, sometimes we do not want what the world has thrown us and what we can do is to bear with it even if some people will try to kick you out. What I like about The Walking Dead is that the message behind the novel. It is not about how zombie works to make the story interesting but the message itself, on how to deal life with full of zombies. In fact, the issues that can be found in the novel is true to all especially in today’s time since people encountered a lot of betrayal and fighting the intangible zombie that brought to the new normal world (the pandemic virus) which could be relatable from what was happening in the novel. In fact, people are fighting and secured the life of their family amidst the virus.
There was given questions from the novel and it says, “what if the member of your family is in a diseased state?” “what if trusting and distrusting a person or group of people was the difference between life and death?” (Lauffer,n.d.). I believe this question is not comfortable to think about, but sometimes they said, discomfort is good. It helps us to be awake that sleeps within us. Finally, The Walking Dead simply proved that we cannot be put in every possible situation both real and fantastic through living life alone. And, when we put into situations in real life, we cannot always step back and see them from different points of view. That is why stories help us to explore things in ways we would not otherwise and that is the power of stories.
REFERENCES:
Barrs (2014). The Walking Dead, Book One. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30071.The_Walking_Dead_Book_One.
Langley, T. (2016). Life (and Death) Lessons Learned from "The Walking Dead". Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beyond-heroes-and-villains/201612/life-and-death-lessons-learned-the-walking-dead.
Lauffer (n.d.). The Walking Dead is Not About Zombies. Retrieved from https://mythicscribes.com/analysis/the-walking-dead-is-not-about-zombies/.
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