The Walking Dead Volume 2: Miles Behind Us (Walking Dead) | Robert Kirkman

The Walking Dead Volume 2: Miles Behind Us (Walking Dead) | Robert Kirkman | Refreshing take on the genre

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The Walking Dead V...

	The Walking Dead Volume 2: Miles Behind Us (Walking Dead) Robert Kirkman Image Comics, 2007 - 136 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe, causing the dead to rise and feed on the living. In a matter of months, society has crumbled: There is no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV. In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally begin living. This volume follows our band of survivors on their tragic journey in search of shelter. Characters live and die as they brave a treacherous landscape littered with packs of the walking dead.

Feedback for TPB of WD 2

The Product was exactly as described. Brand New condition. Fast shipping w/ the necessary safety parameters that ensured the quality of the book. Highly Recommend!

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Refreshing take on the genre

The Walking Dead is a very mature story that takes a look at topics ignored by many of the other examples of the Zombie Survival Fiction genre. It shows how emotion leads to action in ways that can shock modern readers' sense of stability. It provides an interesting commentary on how thin the veneer of civilization is despite all attempts by the characters to cling to it. It lets the reader experience the loss of structure and provokes thoughts of "what would I do" beyond the typical "raid the gun store, grocery store and head for a cabin in the woods" mentality we've seen before.

The entire series thus far (1-7) has been top notch and a real example of how graphic novels can tackle stories that would take a 600 page novel to cover in detail.

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As we rejoin our characters, they are, well... still battling zombies

If you enjoyed the first volume of "The Walking Dead", there's no reason to not pick up this second collection. New artist Charlie Adlard's style is more scratchy and jagged than Tony Moore's smoother realistic take on things in volume one, but jagged and scratchy somehow nicely complements the story's frequent edgy jolts. This is the last handful of stories before the characters begin a long stay in an abandoned prison, so enjoy the variety of locales while you can. "The Walking Dead" isn't perfect: the bickering (between characters who have paired off into couples and between many characters in general) can get tiresome, and often there are too many dense speeches even when characters aren't bickering. But for all its faults (and they're relatively minor ones), "The Walking Dead" is nevertheless a bracing, dramatic piece of ongoing horror fiction that's a welcome antidote to usual comics fare.

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A Fine Enough Read, but Predictable

I had major problems with The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye because author Robert Kirkman borrowed liberally from the plots and themes of established zombie greats like Dawn of the Dead (Ultimate Edition) and 28 Days Later (Widescreen Edition). Thankfully, in volume 2 he actually begins to get original and tread some new ground. And "Miles Behind us" is an enjoyable enough read, to be sure (it's got everything you'd expect in a zombie comic: action, gore, and weighty thematic material). I turned to it as a diversion from studying and it certainly served its purpose. But is it great? Not by a long shot. Volume 1 had also been plagued by the cliche factor (using stereotypical gender roles and set-ups to move the plot along), but did not suffer nearly as badly from predictability as volume 2 does. At every turn, Kirkman seems to be lazily setting up the plot, and it all begins early on in volume 2 when our intrepid band of survivors meets three other survivors who join their group ... making the number of people in their group exactly what it was in volume 1 before Kirkman had to kill some people off. One of the new members, Tyreese, is even an almost exact match for the departed Shane, so that Rick Grimes can have an athletic, trusted sidekick to help lead the charge in fighting zombies (minus the burden of a love triangle with Grimes' wife). Kirkman's set-ups, meanwhile, are obvious stages for another action scene, and he adheres pretty closely to your expectations for what is going to happen. When the group finds a seemingly utopian gated community that they are convinced they can use to start a new life you might wonder if their new home might be teeming with as-yet-unseen zombies who will force them to make a quick, daring exit? You'd be right. When a vet who heals an injured group member reveals that he's been keeping his zombie-fied neighbors and family members locked up in his barn in the hope that their 'disease' will go away, could it possibly be that said zombies are about to escape and prove once and for all that they cannot be contained / controlled? Of course, which won't surprise anyone who's seen Romero's "Day of the Dead."

As for the characters themselves, they just aren't interesting. News of Lori's pregnancy fuels some charged moments between her and Rick, who's pretty certain that the baby may belong to the aforementioned Shane, but for the most part the two just continue to bicker their point-counterpoint, reasonable vs. optimistic arguments. Tyreese pairs off with another survivor within moments of his arrival in the group, while another also finds some action with the vet's farmer-girl daughter, making this zombie story feel like an episode of "Grey's Anatomy." There are stabs at intrigue with some mysterious plotting between Tyreese's daughter and her creepy boyfriend, but since we don't know anything about them, where they came from, or what they might be up to, it's awfully taxing to care.

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Maybe I Spoke Too Soon

My review for the first volume of "The Walking Dead" was pretty much glowing. The review was even titled "A Character Driven, Sprawling Epic." That's pretty much a stamp of approval. The writing which ranged from bland to good to exceptional was balanced out by Tony Moore's art, which really gave life to Kirkman's characters.

Well, Moore is no longer the series artist, starting with this volume. He still does the covers, but the new penciller for each issue of "The Walking Dead" is Charlie Adlard, and to compare his art to Moore's is like comparing the scrawlings of an elementary level child to the prose of a published author. Adlard isn't horrible, but his panels are often ugly. The action scenes fall flat because the details blend together, leaving you guessing at what is going on some of the time. A lot of the characters are drawn to look quite similar, and it leaves you forgetting who is who.

Another bad thing about losing Moore was that Charlie Adlard's art isn't good enough to mask the flaws in Robert Kirkman's writing. As far as where Kirkman is taking the story and the plots he has going on, he's doing a fine job. However, he is pretty bad at dialogue. Every character speaks the same, and no one ever seems to be casual. To keep this exposition-heavy prose "light," he throws in words like "ain't" and "man" a lot, but that isn't enough to make these forced words seem like a person would really speak them. He needs to work on giving each character a voice. Also, he needs to tone down the sexism a tad. A few of the reviewers noticed it in the first volume, but it wasn't quite as blatant as it is here. In this story, men do the tough work and women watch the children and nag the men. That needs to change. Fast.

I was convinced I was reading a great story after volume one, but now I'm less sure. I'll probably keep reading until the end (if there ever is an end), but I'm hoping that things get a lot better than this. And yeah, I really wouldn't mind a new penciller.

6/10

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reviews: page 1, 2

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