One of the greatest comic books of all time is Image Comics and Skybound Entertainment’s “The Walking Dead”, a monthly black-and-white series that started in 2003, created and written by Robert Kirkman with artist Tony Moore.
Ever since I read the first issue, I’ve been dying for an adaptation. In fact, the first I heard about a television series was at a San Diego Comic-Con party when a producer told me he had landed the rights. I immediately grabbed a drink and celebrated. Nobody else seemed to care at the time, but I didn’t give a fuck, I was in geek heaven.
When AMC finally adapted it to the small screen in 2010, I wasn’t a huge fan, but as a collector of the books stuck with it for a few years. While the show has become the biggest thing in horror, I still swear by the books, which have been collected as trade paperbacks over the years (better for toilet reading, ya know?). But now it’s finding a new medium, thanks to AMC.
The first ever issues of “The Walking Dead” has been animated and posted to YouTube, with a promise of a continuation of the first TPB, “Days Gone Bye”, which collects the comic’s first six issues. Does this mean every issue is going to be animated and for free? I have no idea. What I do know is that if this is assembled into some sort of feature-length animation I would pay to watch it on iTunes or some other streaming medium.
“The world we knew is gone. The world of commerce and frivolous necessity has been replaced by a world of survival and responsibility. An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe, causing the dead to rise and feed on the living. In a matter of months, society has crumbled: no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV. In a world ruled by the dead, the survivors are forced to finally start living.”
Here’s the first episode. Watch as Rick wakes up in a hospital and works his way into the barren streets of Atlanta.