The Walking Dead, Volume 1: Days Gone Bye

The Walking Dead does a very good job in its first volume of setting itself up as a slightly different take on the standard "zombies destroy civilization" storyline. Most movies and stories focus on showing the outbreak as it happens, and end as the lonely group of survivors that they've been following buy it not too long after. The Walking Dead doesn't show the initial event at all, with the main character being comatose in the hospital as it happens, and portends to be a much longer term look at what could happen to survivors as constantly living in fear wears on them. I obviously can't see that too much in just the first six issues, but what's here is effective.

There's a lot of set up as the main character Rick comes to terms with how the world's changed as he tries to track down his wife and son and joins a camp of survivors living outside Atlanta. They do various things, some smart and others not so much to survive, and we learn some about the specifics of Kirkman's zombies - they differentiate between themselves and humans by smell, and mostly act like traditional Romero ones. There's some family drama that happens to go along with the normal threat from the undead, and it seems like he really has a plan already about what he wants to do with the story. The art by Tony Moore is really good, both stylized and detailed in a way that makes it simple fun to look at, although the slightly cartoony faces might not totally match the tone of the comic, and he does get replaced by the next volume. Well done, interesting book with potential.