Posted in: Comics | Tagged: charlie adlard, Comics, entertainment, image, robert kirkman, walking dead
How Walking Dead #145 Tells A Tragedy Without Sound (SPOILERS)
The opening pages of today's Walking Dead #145 by Robert Kirkman, Charie Adlard, Stefano Gaudiano and Cliff Rathburn take away a tool of the comic book trade, sound. Which is unusual, because once of the essential aspects of the opening scene is sound.
The previous issue concluded with the realisation that Alpha and the Whisperers (band name?) had slaughtered a number of Rick's camp and set their heads up on spikes to mark their territory.
Including Ezekiel. And Michonne was in the party that discovered them.
And so we see that scene unfold, and the realisation that the heads are undead. They are still animated, can make gutteral sounds, and have an even greater emotional impact on those they have left behind.
We realise this, not by speech balloons, or sound effects, but by the effect they have on others present, expressed silently, until Rick speaks.
Too many people experience The Walking Dead solely on the television, or experience it filtered through that medium. This is just an example of something subtle that could not have been achieved in this fashion anywhere else but comics.
Isn't it great?
Comics courtesy of Orbital Comics, London, with a Jay Faeber signing today, and a Doctor Who signing all day on Saturday – like a mini-Doctor Who convention.