Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Book Review: The Walking Dead Vol. 2: Miles Behind Us, by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard


Yeah, this one is a little bit more like it.

With the drama at the Atlanta campsite having reached its head, Grimes assumes leadership of the refugees and they hit the road. They meet a few new people along the way, and land upon an abandoned suburb and a pastoral farmstead in their search for a home safe from the restless dead.

With the introductory issues out of the way, it feels like the second volume gets a little deeper into Kirkman's "all about the characters" mission. The characters are a little less stereotypical in this one, and though we're still basically in a zombie soap opera, the interactions are considerably more believable (and, in a few instances, genuinely scary and affecting). The pace is a little better, too, with the traveling lending a bit more urgency to the proceedings. The places they land along the way have a bit more going on than the campsite in the first volume, as well.

The only tradeoff was the predictability, though that shouldn't be too surprising from a zombie story. There is never really any doubt about how each mini-story in the volume will turn out, especially considering that any suspense that does exist is neutralized with some pretty ham-handed foreshadowing. That leaves the surprises for the characters that end up leaving or getting killed, some of which I found surprising to the point of jarring (again, that's a little bit more like it).

The direction of this series looks good. Whatever flaws it has, it's so damned readable that I had to force myself not to breeze through it in twenty minutes. I'm in for the next few volumes, for sure.

Verdict: 4 out of 5

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