Won't You Take Me To ZombieTown?
If your DVD rack, bookshelf, or gaming library are anything like mine I'd warrant a guess at all three proving that you have already made a move to a town that's right for you. Between movie remakes and video game franchises one need not linger long to feel fetid undead breath close at hand. We have mall zombies, casino zombies, racist zombies, radioactive zombies, thinking zombies, and even playable zombies.
While I've enjoyed the gradual cross-genre escalation, to the point of peeling an Oprah's Reading List sticker from a paperback, saturation doesn't always equate quality.
In the giant bucket of media that has felt the zombie bite Left 4 Dead easily floats to the top, a rich layer of calorie-packed fat teeming with delicious enjoyment. Game play aspects aside the experience remains a finely executed spin on the classic zombie spawned scenario, situation mere catalyst for the senses as both scripted and unscripted experiences unfold. The Hows and Whys are irrelevant, major background history given but a ghost of a whisper with subtle visual cues or multi-faceted graffiti. Of the many steps Valve took in the right direction with this game's creation the deliberate separation of chapters took the longest for me to appreciate.
It's for the complete opposite reason that, in the wake of a recent re-exposure, I'm so fond of the ongoing series The Walking Dead.
Where each of the four "movies" in L4D are split up as to not thoroughly crush the morale of the survivors as they'd escape one predicament only to step in to another, The Walking Dead embraces that very formula to better develop interpersonal relationships in the scope of the ever widening complications of the zombie apocalypse. Where situational dialogue or panicked cries evoke attachment to the characters in L4D, a small part of the whole really, seeing the polar opposite long-haul approach as penned by writer Robert Kirkman elicits an entirely different mindset with a sort of slow-burning dread that fuels the experience uncharacteristically long enough for our main character to grow a beard or whose goals are dynamic and conclusion yet to be determined.
This isn't your afternoon in the mall or road trip to the ocean and as the series progressed, now 57 monthly released issues in, I've witnessed extremely well scripted executions of several "what if" ideas I've always harbored about the zombie apocalypse but are have rarely seen attempted in either the confines of a two-hour production or otherwise.
The image above is the first cover I ever saw and sums up a lot of what makes the series worthy of the praise its received over the years. Here we see our primary character draped in a decidedly non-bad ass quilt, entire composition vastly far flung from any cross-genre depiction (especially in a horror comic) that usually sports a buxom lass, cleft-chinned hero, or oozing monstrosity. That isn't to say that this Romero-inspired epic doesn't sport tell-tale undead gore or the ghastly ultra violence synonymous with most introspection flavored survival stories, both are certainly present, but ultimately The Walking Dead isn't really about zombies.
Comics have long since cast off super hero stereotypes and juvenile themes and while most of my favorites are long out of production The Walking Dead holds a key spot in the zombie genre as a still-breathing series representing some of the best creative content available to sport the pallid skin, rotting flesh, and guttural moaning so many of us have come to love.
