Last week, I talked about The Road, which was originally adapted from a book. As promised from last week, I am going to be talking about The Walking Dead, a successful series on AMC, which was adapted from a comic book. I might as well start by talking about the superior product, which is inevitably the literary inspiration.

Yeah, the comic book of The Walking Dead is far better than the television series, and it just illustrates how we just can’t seem to keep something good in its original medium. I mean, if someone writes a good book, does it have to be a movie? I just finished The Art of Racing in the Rain this week, and I would refuse to see it if someone made it into a movie. If you aren’t familiar with Garth Stein’s work, it is a book told from a dog’s point of view. This would not translate well to screen, but I don’t think The Walking Dead suffers equally in its translation.

I can tell you the first problem that I had with this TV series. The original comic began with Image comics written by Robert Kirkman, and I first saw it with book collections. These book collections were in black and white, which works very well for this story. The original art by Tony Moore created a very gritty feel that reminds me of George Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead or other black-and-white zombie films. When Charlie Adlard took over the art, the entire comic took got a feel that was even more dark, and the characters became even grittier as well. Now, as someone who used to read comic books, I know that changing the illustrator can kill a comic. In the case of The Walking Dead, it really made this series shine in a dark way. Just look at a later image if you want to see what that looks like.

This is where the television show can’t compete from the get-go. The television show is in color. I suppose that would be inevitable, because I can think of few television shows, if any, that are in black-and-white. I can think of movies like Pi that pull it off, but I guess no TV producer wants to run the risk of having a monochromatic show. I suppose that this is where I can get all snobby and say that black and white really brings a great depth to film, and that The Walking Dead should have just put it in black and white. Something tells me I could probably figure out how to watch the DVDs or the Netflex episodes and find a way to put a filter on them. In fact, maybe I should just do that if that is an issue.

I believe that Robert Kirkman helped with the transition of The Walking Dead into a TV show, as his name appears as an executive producer. If that is the case, then I’m not certain if he should have agreed to it unless it was a shot-for-shot adaptation of the comic book, like Frank Miller’s Sin City. Then again, maybe he didn’t want a direct transition, because the plotlines on the TV show are different than the comic book. This is to be expected when comic books go into movie format, and sometimes the adaptation works well. After all, some comic books like X-men and Spider-man are decades old, and a screen adaptation can introduce audiences to the classic characters. Personally, I thought the 2002 Spider-man film gave more depth to Peter Parker than the original comic. I also enjoyed the interesting take of the X-men in the 2000 X-men film.

So if a comic-book goes to a movie or TV show, I expect to see changes. Of course, it is always a risk, and sometimes, it works. Sometimes it feels like it would be better if the screenwriters just took the comic books and just copied them in the proper format, and then attempted to put some sort of adaptation of that on the screen. I honestly don’t know if The Walking Dead comic would work as a direct translation, but I wish it would have been attempted.

As it is, the TV show does mirror certain elements of the plot of the comic pretty faithfully. For example, the group finds a way to settle in a prison, which would be a good fortress against a world of zombies, really. The show does a pretty good job about dealing with the effects of this, which is the saving grace of the comic.

Seriously, the comic and the TV isn’t really about zombies. Zombies are the reason why the story is happening, but the story is really about the breakdown of civilization. It is an old story, somewhat related to Mad Max, but it is older than Gone with the Wind. The idea is that society has just become an “every man for himself” mentality, and on The Walking Dead, the scavenging living can be worse than the mindless zombies. The comic book is deliberately slow, and there are entire issues where nothing happens other than simply surviving, and many characters die in this harsh realm. I honestly can’t imagine waiting a month to see what happens next, only to find that very little does. However, isn’t this more lifelike? Sometimes it takes years to see a major change, but on a TV show, you often have to constantly change to keep things interesting. The Walking Dead TV show has season finales and a reason season premiere, but its source material dragged on in such a way that was lifelike and yet fascinating at the same time.

The TV show has a lot of scenes where zombies and humans are killed in gruesome ways. For some reason, I never saw this a gratuitous in the comic book, but on the TV show, it is black and white and red all over. In fact, it can be downright uncomfortable to watch. I always felt the real horror of the story is that humanity can be very adamant about its brutality and put too much emphasis on its own survival instinct.

My main concern is that the TV show may outlast the comic book, which is still being printed. I don’t know what Kirkman plans for his show in the long run, and I would imagine that he wouldn’t tell people if he has a plan. I have seen franchises ruined because they didn’t know when to end, but if Kirkman has an ending in mind, he is probably milking it for all its worth.