James Lowder (ed.) - Triumph of the walking dead : Robert Kirkmans zombie epic on page and screen

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THIS PUBLICATION HAS NOT BEEN PREPARED, APPROVED, OR LICENSED BY ANY ENTITY THAT CREATED OR PRODUCED THE WELL-KNOWN COMIC SERIES OR TELEVISION SHOW THE WALKING DEAD.

Triumph of The Walking Dead 2011 by James Lowder

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Triumph of the walking dead : Robert Kirkmans zombie epic on page and

screen / edited by James Lowder.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-936661-13-8 (alk. paper)

Ebook ISBN 978-1-936661-30-5

1. Kirkman, Robert. Walking dead. 2. Walking dead (Television program)

3. Graphic novelsUnited States. 4. Zombies in literature. I. Lowder, James.

PN6727.K586W338 2011

741.5973dc23

2011029085

Copyediting by Rebecca Logan and Oriana Leckert

Proofreading by Nora Nussbaum

Cover design by Kit Sweeney

Cover and interior artwork 2011 Rafael Kayanan

Text design, composition, and ebook conversion by Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.

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Dead folk wont stay dead.

They keep getting up.

Least they do in fiction and film. They come out of the grave, or roll off the slab, and head out for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and any available snack in between. They do this without need of reservations, manners, or even a table and chair, and one can certainly dismiss the tablecloth. They grab the living and eat them up, and readers and viewers keep paying to eat that experience up right with them.

Year after year after year.

Its hard to explain why the dead wont die, why they just keep coming back, filling books and stories and comics, shambling across big screens and TV sets, even popping up in poems and car commercials.

Whats up?

The idea isnt really new, though different writers and filmmakers have refined it over the years. In fact, it goes way back. If memory serves me, and it may not, theres a line in Gilgamesh, the oldest written story we know of, about the hungry dead, how they will come back from hell, or its equivalent, to smack teeth on raw flesh.

So, the idea of someone dead getting a ticket back to the land of the living so he might consume the flesh of the living has been floating around for a long time. For that matter, some Christian religious rituals involve consuming the Savior. The wine and wafer is interpreted as being, at the moment of the rite, the literal flesh and blood of Jesus.

Kind of creepy, really.

But what exactly is it that keeps these dead folk staggering back?

What holds our interest?

What is it in our subconscious that wants them to flail about, grab and bite, smack and chew?

Answers abound, and all of them are probably right, at least on some level. The simplest boils down to this: Its the End of the World, and theres monsters out there. You could substitute a variety of monsters, I suppose. Its just that right now the monsters happen to be the dead. And when you look closely, those zombies can easily be metaphors for disease, terrorism, conservatism and conformity, liberalism and anarchy. They can represent our natural fear of things that are dead and will get stink on us, and they can remind us of our ultimate fate, no matter what future plans weve made. They can even force us to confront the taboo of cannibalism, while were at it.