The Walking Dead Volume One "Days Gone Bye"

A fresh change of scenery. That's exactly how I felt with The Walking Dead Volume One. Books are great. And movies are awesome, but graphic novels combine both those elements and this one did so very well. Although, the story in volume one was a little boring it was still interesting. I didn't know what to expect after turning some pages and the end was a complete surprise. One thing that I enjoyed about the graphic novel was the change in location for hiding out from the zombies. They didn't hide in the mall, underground, or move around house to house. They stayed where they were. They camped out in the wilderness. A location so often deemed as unsafe in prior zombie fiction.

In the introduction Richard Kirkman states that he's not trying to scare anyone and "Good zombie movies show us how messed up we are, they make us question our station in society... and our society's station in the world." I believe the first volume of The Walking Dead graphic novels do so very often. It is clear very early on that the story is not about zombies themselves but how people react to them and how they react when people are hurt by them or by the chaos they caused. The love triangle between Rick, Lori, and Shane is evident enough. Shane takes his partners wife and kid in order to keep them safe yet falls in love with her and her child. When Rick is reintroduced into their lives it makes sense that Shane would feel hurt and abandoned by the woman he loves. Time kills. Time hurts. Time gives hope but shatters dreams at the same time. That is what ultimatley leads to Shane's death. He can't wait any longer for the army to rescue the group and he can't wait any longer for Rick to get out of the picture so he can be with Lori. It makes sense, but Rick can't be blamed for not getting what he wants. And niether can the zombies. It's a matter of circumstance and coicidence that killed Shane. Not Carl attacking him, although, in a literal sense it is. But the main thing that kills Shane's spirit is the time wasted and time it takes to survive. It got to his head and was his fatal flaw.