I’ve always been a fan of stories that have dense characters, but not dense plotlines. Such examples would be Lucky Star, Clerks, and The Breakfast Club. While I can enjoy something like Die Hard, which doesn’t have the most realistic or relatable characters but has a great plot with things always happening, characterization has always been a very important thing for me. If I can’t feel for the characters and their motivations, why should I care about what’s happening to these people? However, on a third hand, there are stories that have equally outstanding storylines and characterization, which are also some of my favorites. Some examples would be Doctor Who, Green Arrow (Kevin Smith and Mike Grell’s runs in particular), Fight Club, and the Walking Dead.

The difference between the Walking Dead and most zombie stories is that it has a wide variety of great characters. While some of the characters don’t really get that much development or depth to them in just this volume (others are killed off before they can really have any depth to them), the focus characters of the book are thoroughly thought out and realized, and you really get a feel for that while reading them.

Rick, the main protagonist of the book, is the reader’s point of view character. He asks questions that we would be asking as we’re reading the story, and instead of characters dropping exposition in inner monologs or clunky dialog, they explain them to Rick as he asks our questions, which creates a new sense of realism and credibility to the story. While Rick doesn’t have the most complex motivation, it doesn’t have to be. Rick doesn’t need a revenge plot against the man who killed his father or anything to keep us empathizing with him. All he needs is a very basic and human motivation, wanting his family to be safe. Rick also includes the rest of the camp into his quest for safety, which just hammers home the idea that he is a strong member of the group over time. He is a great lead character, who I hope to see more development from over the course of the series.

Shane acts as the main human antagonist of this volume. This is also done very subtly. Shane isn’t just a full fledged bad guy. I mean sure, he is a bit of a scumbag, boning his friends wife the minute he assumes that he’s dead. But Shane shares the trait of having a very basic and human motivation that keeps us as the reader invested in him as a character. Shane’s motivation is Lori. Yes, it is very out of left field to include a cliched love triangle into a gritty post-apocalyptic zombie story. However, I can’t say that the love triangle is invalid. Though it isn’t shown in the book itself, you do get a feel for why Shane would want to be with Lori in the first place. He became her protector in a world made of shit and that gave him a sense of empowerment and territoriality (his territory being Lori). The reason that he’s flipping out at Rick more and more as the book progresses is out of the growing envy that his empowerment and territoriality has planted inside of him. This creates an antagonist that we can empathize with, which is always a plus. The one thing that the TV show really improved upon with Shane is keeping him alive longer than in the comic. In the show he really gets to develop and we see him more as a person as the series progresses, which makes his death far more tragic for the viewers.

That’s one of the things that I really didn’t like about this. The characters were killed off way too soon. Since characterization is a very important part of any story for me, seeing these people die didn’t really have an effect on me, particularly Amy. She has a number of lines that I could count on one hand before she gets her throat ripped out, which instead of causing the wanted reaction of “Oh no, Amy’s dead!”, I said, “Wait, who was that?” And then I answered myself, “Dude, that was Amy.” The people in my classroom were very confused. However, this is a very small flaw that I can get over. Jim and Shane were portrayed fantastically, which made their deaths climatic and heart-wrenching. I do realize that Jim had just about as much dialog as Amy got before they each bit their respective bullets, but his lack of dialog actually creates a new dimension of realism for the character. Instead of being shallow, like Amy, Jim is mysterious, which naturally makes the reader want to learn more about him. Because of this, his death has more impact than Amy’s.

The comic relief in general is done brilliantly. It never seems intrusive or forced and, while you’re reading it, you can almost imagine that characters spouting these quips out of nervousness. The situations that these people are in are very bad and having them say jokes infrequently adds to the dread that they’re feeling.

I also like how the art-work represents the story, which was one of the first things I noticed while reading it. There is a dissonance between the structure of the characters and the finished product of how the characters look. The structure is very cartoony, almost like something Phil Hester would draw, but the detail put onto these structures adds a dimension of reality to them. This is almost exactly how the story itself feels. The cartoonish structures representing the overall optimistic outlook on life that the story has, and the hyper detail added to the characters represents the literal dread of the plot. Structure=Subtext, Details=Text.

Days Gone Bye is a great first volume, which Robert Kirkman is very good at writing, as he showed with this and the first volume of Invincible. It hooks you in right from the start and keeps you interested to see more. I’ve owned the first volumes for well over a year now and I’ve only read this one once before this. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the series has in store.

Peace; Love; Empathy;

-Alaska

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