Last week we spent some time discussing the first half of AMC’s The Walking Dead – Season Two in preparation for last Sunday’s mid-season premiere. Much of that conversation revolved around the distinctions we’re seeing between the television series and Robert Kirkman’s comic book series from Image. With more than 90 issues published, KevinMLD has been reading since the beginning. Rather than waiting for PTB to read through it all in order, we decided to dive in with a discussion of issue #91 through the current issue #93.

Spoilers for all forms of The Walking Dead will follow with some specific details from The Walking Dead #91-93.

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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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This year’s New York Comic Con came and went this weekend (10/8/10-10/10/10), and this is a tough one to write up. In a word, it was overwhelming. I want to say I had a good time, but I don’t know that I came away from it with the experience that I was looking for. Thankfully, that wasn’t true for everyone here at MLD, and I did come back with a lot to write about.

The Show

Saturday was impossibly crowded. Reports indicate that 97,000 people attended the show throughout the weekend and it felt like every one of them was in the same aisle (Evan Dorkin sums it up well here). Attendees reported waiting up to an hour to get into the building and even to get into some of the panels. Both Saturday and Sunday were reported as “sold out,” but I’m not sure that point reflects a reasonable number for that space. Combining the show with the Anime Festival may have just been too much.

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