World Famous Comics: The Walking Dead Volume 3: Safety Behind Bars (Walking Dead)
The Walking Dead Volume 3: Safety Behind Bars (Walking Dead)
By: Robert Kirkman Publisher: Image Comics Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Image Comics Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 136 Publication Date: May 30, 2007
Product Description: An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe, causing the dead to rise and feed on the living. In a matter of months, society has crumbled: there is no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV. In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally begin living. This volume follows our band of survivors as they set up a permanent camp inside a prison. Relationships change, characters die, and our team of survivors learn there's something far more deadly than zombies out there: each other.
A solid story, laying mor foundation... Some may say this bit of the ongoing saga is a bit over done or even stolen from other sources...but I prefer to listen to what the author has said himself in his description of his own work.
He is taking his favorite things from all the zombie movies and stories he has ever experienced and laying the groundwork up to the point we all know. Yes, we have probably seen most of this before, but a new day is coming and we need this to see where the characters have been before we can branch off into new territory.
The author states he wants to make this series the zombie flick that never ends...he wants it to go on past where the end credits begin to roll on other series. With this part of the saga, we have reached that point and now it begins to change, and become unpredictable.
Take it from someone who has read all the way to the latest issue...it does build on what has gone before...and it really holds your attention. I have enjoyed every word of it.
Story Gets More Interesting; Art Stays Bad; Sexism Gets Worse The more morally grey something is, the more interesting it is to me. Hell, my favorite season of Angel is the fifth, when he becomes the CEO of the evil company he'd been fighting for the previous four seasons. I love seeing characters in a bad situation, forced to develop and do things that will up the drama-ante and push them in ambiguous directions. It's just plain interesting.
So I'm glad Kirkman filled this third volume to the top with moral ambiguity, because the whole idea is really seeing how these characters deal with a world taken over by the dead. The problem is, as I stated in the last issue, the characters aren't really distinguishable from each other. Rick develops nicely and so does Tyreese, but everyone else seems like cardboard cutouts. That, plus every time they open their mouths, they become exposition machines. The dialogue in this sucks. There is absolutely no way around that. Unlike the mediocre second volume, the story makes up for it a little, but it still leaves me a bit dry.
And there are also much worse problems. For one, the art--no long Moore, who illustrated Volume One which was the only really GOOD volume so far--is not getting much better than what we saw in Volume Two, which--to say the least--wasn't so good. But that doesn't even register when you compare it to the NEXT problem:
I just can't get over the overt sexism in this comic, and how it seems to be getting worse and worse with every issue. The character Andrea, who is known as the best shooter of the entire gang, has to convince the men to let her come along to kill zombies. They agree, but she is only allowed to get the ones they don't kill. Rick's wife Lori is pregnant, so every time she offers up a complaint--despite its validity--the characters blame it on hormones. Similarly, when Lori is arguing with Rick and calls him on trying to act like a patriarch, he tells her to "Shut the (expletive) up!" Of course, no one comes to her defense, because in the world Robert Kirkman has created, women are submissive to men. It brings my enjoyment of this series down considerably, and I'm getting to the point where I'm not sure if I'll continue with this book or not, no matter how good the story gets, if it even does get better.
5/10
Best Book in the series so far This series of Graphic novels has the strange distinction that it is the only one that my wife has ever read and really enjoyed. If you liked the first two books buying this one is a no brainer. Book 3 is a very addictive read and it is hard to put down when you start. It expands the plot line nicely and seems to have more action and less relationship based story lines.
Third Strike, and I'm Officially Done With this Series After two mediocre installments in the Walking Dead series in which author Robert Kirkman alternately stole from established sources (Volume 1) or or adhered strictly to predictability (Volume 2), "Safety Behind Bars" has finally killed any interest I might have had in this series for good. It's almost as predictable as volume 2, and probably would be just as bad if this volume had to rely on the set-up-and-action-sequence format that bogged "Miles Behind Us" down. In this one our survivors have settled down in a prison to try and start their lives anew without the threat of zombies getting into their camp in the middle of the night, so Kirkman attempts to switch things up on us by having someone in the prison start beheading survivors in grisly fashion. Now, he seems to be saying, we can watch as the survivors attempt to survive each other! ... except that the identity of the killer is all-too obvious. At first, Grimes and the others lock up one of the prison's former inmates, but begin to suspect each other anyway while the reader scratches their head and wonders why it doesn't seem to occur to them that one of the OTHER former inmates might be behind the killings. Kirkman is so busy trying to show us how potentially psychologically scarred the survivors are that he imagines that he can blind his readers to reason just for the sake of his themes. Not this reader. The morals decay predictably as Grimes and Tyreese begin to favor vigilante justice, but that concept has been done better many times before this ("Lord of the Flies," anyone?).
Kirkman also revisits his old practice of stealing from established sources when Grimes and Tyreese go on a zombie-killing spree throughout the prison in order to make it hospitable. An homage to the 'cleaning out the mall' sequence in the original "Dawn of the Dead," you might ask? Given Kirkman's track record, I'm more inclined to say that it's either laziness or outright theft. We're also forced to endure one of those by now groan-inducing twists where a character left for dead after being surrounded by zombies turns up alive and victorious later ... no thanks.
SPOILERS AHEAD! But the big deal-breaker when it comes to the Walking Dead series? Kirkman's revelation that all of the survivor's have already been infected by whatever is causing the whole zombie thing, but that as long as they are still alive they will remain 'normal'. Now, I ask you, where's the suspense if your hope for escape just went out the window? But beyond that it just doesn't make sense the way the story had been going in Volumes 1 and 2; Kirkman tries to legitimize his plot twist by having Grimes embark on an odyssey to Shane's grave from the first installment to find that his former partner, who was felled by a gunshot and not by a zombie, has joined the ranks of the walking dead. But there's still a not-so-tiny problem: WHAT ABOUT THE FIRST TWO CHARACTERS THAT WERE KILLED OFF IN THE PRISON?? Why haven't they turned up to menace the survivor's, since apparently Shane was able to crawl out of HIS grave?
I suppose that Kirkman is trying to hammer in his ultimate premise, which seems to be that the titular walking dead actually refers to the survivors, who must learn to cherish every moment in a society where the rules and order have gone out the window. But in this increasingly frustrating series it becomes more and more difficult to care. And I, for one, give up.
Grade: F
great Another great addition to what is turning out to be a great comic book series.
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