In our previous discussions of AMC’s The Walking Dead, we’ve been very careful not to spoil details from the Image Comics series the show is based on. With nearly one-hundred issues published, there’s a great deal to mine for television but the two series are becoming more and more distinct from one another. The result is both maintaining the sense that anything can happen and no one is safe that the comic series is known for.

As the show returns tonight for the remainder of its second season, we’ll digest everything we’ve seen so far and try to make sense of where things are heading. Spoilers for all forms of The Walking Dead will follow.

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As the first season of AMC’s new monster hit (pun intended), The Walking Dead, reaches its mid-point, we at MLD decided it was a good time to gather up some of our regulars to chat about what we’ve seen so far.

Some of what we discuss may be considered spoilers to some readers, so if you’re trying to avoid any particular details about the comic series or the show, consider yourselves warned.

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Those of us who have enjoyed reading comics for most of our life have been blessed with a decade of comic book movies. By the end of next year, with the exception of a few DC headliners,  every major comic book character will have been turned into a major motion picture and licensing opportunity. We’re blessed… Except almost every one of those movies is cringe-inducing. (I’m 99 percent sure PTB doesn’t agree with this assessment, but bear with me.)

I’m not saying there aren’t nice moments in almost all of those films. I’m not saying I don’t line up to see most of them. It’s fantastic to see Superman stop a crashing airplane, but yet another Lex Luthor real estate scam? It’s moving to see the X-Men battle intolerance, but the wacky battle atop the Statue of Liberty to stop Magneto from turning everyone into a mutant? I digress… Comics don’t translate well into films largely because one of the major appeals of comic books is their serial nature. Three X-Men or Spider-Man films in a decade (1.5 watchable ones of each) cannot recreate that serial experience, but it’s been clear to me for years that a television series probably could. The problem is that the only example we’ve had to test this theory during last decade or so is Smallville…

At least until last night’s debut of The Walking Dead.

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