Meeting #28: We Are the Walking Dead

[LanternLight]

Keep in mind that those people who claim misogyny on Kirkman's part would be the same people that would claim the same of Joss Whedon. Joss is one of the most feminist men in the world, but still gets those claims, which is just another parallel between the two. I think the focus of the criticism is because they have these strong female characters, people are so used to them being able to get out of any situation, that when they don't, it seems like misogyny. Whereas, in the work of both Whedon and Kirkman, you see just as many men in the fridge as you do women. To use as my argument, I'll cite Dale and Xander. Dale, as we discussed before was an emotional centerpoint helping to drive the rest of the cast. That is vastly similar to Xander's role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both suffer crippling injuries in their respective stories, as Dale loses one leg to a bite, and Xander loses an eye to a psychotic priest. Neither of them let these injuries slow them down any at all, least of all Xander who starts cracking jokes about his as soon as he possibly can. The point of it is, that just because bad things happen to women, people shouldn't be so quick to jump out and start screaming about 'Fridge Syndrome', especially not in stories with an abundance of strong female characters.

[BrandonBarrows]

I think Gail Simone is more intelligent than the drones I referred to, though she was one of the driving forces behind the term, and she gained fame from popularizing the term, which lead to her career in comics.

She is a great writer, but sensationalism gets attention and it doesn't take long before someone runs with a sensational concept. Originally, the incident that the term was coined to describe was only one such in a list and while some of the examples may be valid, I think it's been blown out of proportion to the extreme.

Is there more violence against women depicted in comics? It depends on how you define violence. If it's any violent actions, then absolutely not by sheer fact that there are more male characters in comics than female characters. If you define violence as violent acts specifically against women (as unfortunately some people seem to), then of course that's what the people who subscribe to that definition are going to see.

But again, it comes down to numbers. As there are still more male characters than female characters, and the vast majority of those characters are heterosexual, they're going to have female mates. And what's the simplest way to show how nasty, brutal and evil a villain is? By crossing that unwritten line and involving the hero's loved ones in the violence. Those loved ones will by and large, by virtue of the numbers, be female.

The "red shirt" concept is poor storytelling regardless of how it's used, I think, and creating a character (any character, male or female) just to kill off counts against the story. If something bad happens to a character within the frame of the larger story, and it's organic, that's a different story (no pun intended), so to be clear, I'm talking specifically about creating a character JUST to depict them as a victim of violence.

If, on the other hand, a writer was consistently coming up with a new girlfriend/wife/lover for their hero specifically to kill them off in horrific ways then, yeah, that writer probably has some sort of problem with women. But most of the writers, and the examples called "women in refrigerators", I think are just falling back on a simple and easy plot device.

[tiggerpete]

Originally Posted by BrandonBarrows

I think Gail Simone is more intelligent than the drones I referred to, though she was one of the driving forces behind the term, and she gained fame from popularizing the term, which lead to her career in comics.

She is a great writer, but sensationalism gets attention and it doesn't take long before someone runs with a sensational concept. Originally, the incident that the term was coined to describe was only one such in a list and while some of the examples may be valid, I think it's been blown out of proportion to the extreme.

Is there more violence against women depicted in comics? It depends on how you define violence. If it's any violent actions, then absolutely not by sheer fact that there are more male characters in comics than female characters. If you define violence as violent acts specifically against women (as unfortunately some people seem to), then of course that's what the people who subscribe to that definition are going to see.

But again, it comes down to numbers. As there are still more male characters than female characters, and the vast majority of those characters are heterosexual, they're going to have female mates. And what's the simplest way to show how nasty, brutal and evil a villain is? By crossing that unwritten line and involving the hero's loved ones in the violence. Those loved ones will by and large, by virtue of the numbers, be female.

The "red shirt" concept is poor storytelling regardless of how it's used, I think, and creating a character (any character, male or female) just to kill off counts against the story. If something bad happens to a character within the frame of the larger story, and it's organic, that's a different story (no pun intended), so to be clear, I'm talking specifically about creating a character JUST to depict them as a victim of violence.

If, on the other hand, a writer was consistently coming up with a new girlfriend/wife/lover for their hero specifically to kill them off in horrific ways then, yeah, that writer probably has some sort of problem with women. But most of the writers, and the examples called "women in refrigerators", I think are just falling back on a simple and easy plot device.

to sum up, the women in refrigerators syndrome of writing can also be called laziness, as the writer is too lazy to come up with an original way to up the stakes for the hero

[wiegeabo]

"If they ever try to make us leave, we'll just take this place from them and make it ours."

That line alone pretty much exemplifies how much things have changed from our group of protagonists over all this time. No more is it about establishing something good and trusting people enough to let them join. Now it's about survival, and taking what they need to live another day.

Before getting into things, I'd like to take a moment to curse our bastard of a host for addicting me to this story and adding another book to my already long reading list.

With that out of the way, I actually did what was asked and skipped over the issues after our initial read introducing us to Walking Dead. And pretty much from the beginning of the reading, I was beating myself up as the spoiler started pouring in. Mentions of Lori and her baby, names of people I didn't recognize, not knowing how Rick and Carl found themselves in their situation, not knowing about character who Rick and Carl meet up with and are glad to see. Hell, not knowing what happened to Rick's hand! It was all rather confusing, but only mildly distracting, if that makes any sense. And hearing about these things just made me want to read the skipped issues more, rather than less, especially to see how the present situation evolved, and despite knowing the tragedies that had already come to pass.

Because, indeed, our characters are far different from what they used to be. Rick is no longer a cop. No longer trying to make life work for everyone. All that matters is Carl, because that's all he has left. All that matters.

So, because of the gap, what do we see? We see long trusted characters who no longer trust Rick (like Dale). We see people who are far more damaged then they used to be. And in a zombie apocalypse, that's saying a lot. And we see desperate grabs at civilization; Dale wanting to make a life on the farm, traveling to Washington to find the government.

Yet, despite the search for civilization, we see the last vestiges of civility ripped away. A homicidal killer in the form of a child just starting to emerge. And the only one who can do what's necessary and good for the group is another child.

Whatever innocence may have been left in our little party is far gone. Carl is no longer a happy, but scared, kid living in a bad situation. He's had to grow up, innocence lost, hope gone. In fact, when he finally gets a taste of normal life in the neighborhood in the issues after the reading, it doesn't feel real to him. It doesn't feel like it's a normal life. And Carl even seems to hate it (Although I have a feeling it's much deeper than that. Maybe a form of guilt over being happy when his mom and sister couldn't be happy too.)

And humanity? Humanity, as we define it, is gone. Dead and left behind, little more than a rotting corpse. The zombies could even be a metaphor for their humanity. Something dead and lost, but still walking around, teasing and torturing our protagonists, and deadly to them whenever they get to close to it.

Now, after finishing the reading, I had no choice but to go back and read everything that was skipped over. Despite knowing what was to come, it was still fascinating to watch it all happen. And some great characters, and jaw dropping arcs, are introduced.

And yet, despite all these horrible things we witness, Walking Dead is an addictive read. Made all the more addictive in the facts that Kirkman creates characters you want to follow, stories you want to read, and rarely gives the reader a break between books.

Unfortunately, Walking Dead does fail in one aspect. It is not one of those books that you can skip ahead in the reading. Well, you could, but why would you want to? Too much happens, even during the lulls, and the present is very much built upon the past. It's not like a superhero book where, as long as you're not coming in during the middle of an arc, you can pickup in Superman or Batman's life without missing much (although you probably wouldn't want to do that right now either). But, fortunately, Walking Dead is a book where you don't want to skip ahead. And you look forward to seeing what grizzly fate next awaits our characters.

[BrandonBarrows]

Originally Posted by wiegeabo

Unfortunately, Walking Dead does fail in one aspect. It is not one of those books that you can skip ahead in the reading. Well, you could, but why would you want to? Too much happens, even during the lulls, and the present is very much built upon the past. It's not like a superhero book where, as long as you're not coming in during the middle of an arc, you can pickup in Superman or Batman's life without missing much (although you probably wouldn't want to do that right now either). But, fortunately, Walking Dead is a book where you don't want to skip ahead. And you look forward to seeing what grizzly fate next awaits our characters.

That's not a failure at all. A story you can skip sections of without impact is a failure because it doesn't matter what came before. No over-arcing story means there's no long term planning on the writer's part, and a series of vignettes that are unconnected posing as an ongoing series don't make particularly compelling comics as far as I'm concerned. It's the main reason I stopped reading Spider-Man, and I've heard the same reasoning from a number of people. That and the quality of stories varied wildly, but that's a separate topic.

[JohnLees]

Originally Posted by wiegeabo

"If they ever try to make us leave, we'll just take this place from them and make it ours."

That line alone pretty much exemplifies how much things have changed from our group of protagonists over all this time. No more is it about establishing something good and trusting people enough to let them join. Now it's about survival, and taking what they need to live another day.

Before getting into things, I'd like to take a moment to curse our bastard of a host for addicting me to this story and adding another book to my already long reading list.

With that out of the way, I actually did what was asked and skipped over the issues after our initial read introducing us to Walking Dead. And pretty much from the beginning of the reading, I was beating myself up as the spoiler started pouring in. Mentions of Lori and her baby, names of people I didn't recognize, not knowing how Rick and Carl found themselves in their situation, not knowing about character who Rick and Carl meet up with and are glad to see. Hell, not knowing what happened to Rick's hand! It was all rather confusing, but only mildly distracting, if that makes any sense. And hearing about these things just made me want to read the skipped issues more, rather than less, especially to see how the present situation evolved, and despite knowing the tragedies that had already come to pass.

Because, indeed, our characters are far different from what they used to be. Rick is no longer a cop. No longer trying to make life work for everyone. All that matters is Carl, because that's all he has left. All that matters.

So, because of the gap, what do we see? We see long trusted characters who no longer trust Rick (like Dale). We see people who are far more damaged then they used to be. And in a zombie apocalypse, that's saying a lot. And we see desperate grabs at civilization; Dale wanting to make a life on the farm, traveling to Washington to find the government.

Yet, despite the search for civilization, we see the last vestiges of civility ripped away. A homicidal killer in the form of a child just starting to emerge. And the only one who can do what's necessary and good for the group is another child.

Whatever innocence may have been left in our little party is far gone. Carl is no longer a happy, but scared, kid living in a bad situation. He's had to grow up, innocence lost, hope gone. In fact, when he finally gets a taste of normal life in the neighborhood in the issues after the reading, it doesn't feel real to him. It doesn't feel like it's a normal life. And Carl even seems to hate it (Although I have a feeling it's much deeper than that. Maybe a form of guilt over being happy when his mom and sister couldn't be happy too.)

And humanity? Humanity, as we define it, is gone. Dead and left behind, little more than a rotting corpse. The zombies could even be a metaphor for their humanity. Something dead and lost, but still walking around, teasing and torturing our protagonists, and deadly to them whenever they get to close to it.

Now, after finishing the reading, I had no choice but to go back and read everything that was skipped over. Despite knowing what was to come, it was still fascinating to watch it all happen. And some great characters, and jaw dropping arcs, are introduced.

And yet, despite all these horrible things we witness, Walking Dead is an addictive read. Made all the more addictive in the facts that Kirkman creates characters you want to follow, stories you want to read, and rarely gives the reader a break between books.

Unfortunately, Walking Dead does fail in one aspect. It is not one of those books that you can skip ahead in the reading. Well, you could, but why would you want to? Too much happens, even during the lulls, and the present is very much built upon the past. It's not like a superhero book where, as long as you're not coming in during the middle of an arc, you can pickup in Superman or Batman's life without missing much (although you probably wouldn't want to do that right now either). But, fortunately, Walking Dead is a book where you don't want to skip ahead. And you look forward to seeing what grizzly fate next awaits our characters.

Great post, wieg, thanks for the contribution!

Yeah, sorry if people didn't like me jumping ahead as far as I did, and I'm sorry for any spoilers that came about as a result. But rather than getting in a habit of simply going through a series chronologically like with the previous Sandman meeting, I thought taking a big jump to later in the series would create a different dynamic. Plus, I was trying to illustrate a particular point about how drastically the characters had changed since volume 1.

There was also the issue of when to pick up the series from. There was an obvious temptation to cover the Governor arc, to let our fellow clubbers experience quite possibly the vilest villain in comic book history. But I ended up settling for volumes 9-11, partly because these were the volumes that came after the Compendium that my friend had borrowed and I didn't have access to, but mainly because I felt they covered the most interesting ground thematically. But I'm glad you were encouraged to go and read the rest of the series anyway, as it's a series that's well worth reading.

You raise a good point about the loss of humanity, and the zombies representing a mockery of that extinct way of life. That's somewhat reminiscent of the speech from Rick I quoted where he talks about how it's the decent people who couldn't turn into killers when necessary that are the zombies now. Rick didn't mean his speech to reflect the points you raise, but looking at it bearing your comments in mind, that could certainly be a subtext.

Have people been following the development of Frank Dabaront's AMC TV adaptation of The Walking Dead? I for one am really excited about it. Check here for all the latest updates:

http://blogs.amctv.com/the-walking-dead/

As for the Joss Whedon column, sorry about the delay. I'm way behind on the reading, due to being so busy this week. I'll try to get it up for Monday.

[wiegeabo]

I was using the term failure satirically. Walking Dead doesn't really have an failings.