Last year was a year when Boen loved zombies. I enjoyed The Last of Us TV show, though the video game is still too hard for him. Similarly, he tried to watch the first episode of The Walking Dead TV show, but that wasn't compelling enough for him to keep watching. But he loved the comic book. I'd bought it ages ago back when the Google Play Store was trying to actually become a viable for buying books and had DRM free comics for sale. (Nowadays it's too expensive) I picked it up to read.
The premise of the series is kinda hooky. A zombie apocalypse has always seemed to me to be improbable because any pandemic that a small group of poorly-outfitted people can survive would be easily survivable by an organized government (though probably not a very democratic one). The swiftness into which civilization falls apart also doesn't make sense --- even warlords in places like Somalia rarely commit the kind of depravities regularly seen in this book.
Finally, the characters are flawed, regularly making poor decisions (even the lead protagonist in the series who starts off demonstrating how competent he is) that have disastrous consequences.
Set against that is that this is a series where there's non-stop action. Events happen that shake up the status quo almost every chapter, and it's a far call from series like Game of Thrones where entire novels go by where nothing happens. I can see why it turned into a hit TV show with lots of fans (even some Asian parents watched it!). Each chapter leaves you hanging and keeps you wanting to find out what happens next. But of course 10 years later I'd forgotten it all and the events still happen and are shocking.
The black and white art is crisp, clear, and easy to follow and probably not for people who don't have a strong stomach (I can't imagine any of this being done on TV). Hey, anything that can hold my kid's attention through two fat thousand page volume books (he abandoned the series halfway through the 3rd book) has to be recommended.
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