Post by mummifiedstalin on Mar 18, 2011 10:46:36 GMT -5
So last night, I read about the first 50 or so issues. Amazing stuff. I haven't seen the tv show, and I honestly don't know if I want to. I think what the comic has going is great enough on its own.
Two things:
First, (and SPOILERS warning, I suppose), the issues immediately after the prison falls and Rick and his son are out on his own are probably the single best uses of graphic story telling I've ever seen. Now, granted, I'm not a HUGE comic fan, but the one issue (50?) where Carl is on his own while his dad is passed out is amazingly emotional. And it's done with almost no text, apart from a small speech from the son over his comatose father at the end, which is all the more powerful for being so short. But the way those images can capture suspense, terror, and still being from the point of a view of a child forced to see things no kid could see is just amazing.
...which leads me to the second thing. I have to admit that I've always been a bit skeptical in the past of graphics really being able to tell a story in a significantly different way from other media. The stories themselves always have to be so much more compact, and the visual style in many ways often seemed limited to the artist's ability to show (usually) overly dramatic facial expressions.
But this one completely changed my mind. I don't know that Carl's story would have worked in any other medium. You get the sense of scale, the way you can show images from his perspective, AND do it in ways that can be at once fast and slow. It's that trick of speed that I think makes this issue completely amazing. On the hand hand, with so little to read, it takes probably just a few minutes to read the whole thing. But, at the same time, when you can linger over particular images, the thing can seem like a lifetime, as it's supposed to for Carl as he's left on his own for the first time.
A film version captures you to the time of the experience. A written version would linger in sentence-time too long.
But this...it gets both the intensity of the moment and the terrible suspense of hours of waiting, and even the eternity of trying to lure zombies around a corner, in a way that could probably only happen in sequential-image story telling.
So I think this one finally converted me to a true comics lover.
Plus, goddam, what a great story. Everyone always says that zombie apocalypse stories are really about the human stories of the survivors. This one makes that absolutely true. I'm almost bummed when I see the zombies instead of hearing more human story. But, then, that's kinda the catch of a zombie apocalypse. heh.
Two things:
First, (and SPOILERS warning, I suppose), the issues immediately after the prison falls and Rick and his son are out on his own are probably the single best uses of graphic story telling I've ever seen. Now, granted, I'm not a HUGE comic fan, but the one issue (50?) where Carl is on his own while his dad is passed out is amazingly emotional. And it's done with almost no text, apart from a small speech from the son over his comatose father at the end, which is all the more powerful for being so short. But the way those images can capture suspense, terror, and still being from the point of a view of a child forced to see things no kid could see is just amazing.
...which leads me to the second thing. I have to admit that I've always been a bit skeptical in the past of graphics really being able to tell a story in a significantly different way from other media. The stories themselves always have to be so much more compact, and the visual style in many ways often seemed limited to the artist's ability to show (usually) overly dramatic facial expressions.
But this one completely changed my mind. I don't know that Carl's story would have worked in any other medium. You get the sense of scale, the way you can show images from his perspective, AND do it in ways that can be at once fast and slow. It's that trick of speed that I think makes this issue completely amazing. On the hand hand, with so little to read, it takes probably just a few minutes to read the whole thing. But, at the same time, when you can linger over particular images, the thing can seem like a lifetime, as it's supposed to for Carl as he's left on his own for the first time.
A film version captures you to the time of the experience. A written version would linger in sentence-time too long.
But this...it gets both the intensity of the moment and the terrible suspense of hours of waiting, and even the eternity of trying to lure zombies around a corner, in a way that could probably only happen in sequential-image story telling.
So I think this one finally converted me to a true comics lover.
Plus, goddam, what a great story. Everyone always says that zombie apocalypse stories are really about the human stories of the survivors. This one makes that absolutely true. I'm almost bummed when I see the zombies instead of hearing more human story. But, then, that's kinda the catch of a zombie apocalypse. heh.