Why I Love The Walking Dead, and Four More Post-Apocalyptic Comic Worlds to Explore
- Douglas A. Shepardson
- 7 hours ago
- 8 min read
My favorite genre of fiction (a term that for me includes comic books, film, television, and videogames) explores brutal post-apocalyptic worlds, highlighting the characters who manage to survive them. My love of this genre has something to do with “grit,” a term with (at least) two senses, or meanings.
The first, academic, sense of “grit” can be defined with psychologist Angela Duckworth’s gloss: grit is “perseverance in the pursuit of passion.” But the colloquial sense of “grit” is more about the grime and muck of life that’s usually left off the screen, page, or storyboard.
For example, films show you newborns a minute after coming out: but grit dominates the moment left off screen. And that moment is where the real emotion lies, when you and your half-unconscious, beleaguered partner are transfixed by this cone-headed, blood-and-gut-covered thing, just hoping to hear it cry.
What I like about post-apocalyptic fiction is that it characteristically shows psychologically gritty characters persisting through colloquially gritty environments.
Nothing is too “gritty” to make it on “screen” in post-apocalyptic comics, so these graphic novels, which almost always contain fantastical elements like zombies or sci-fi devices, have a way of being more “real” emotionally than things like drama and sitcoms.
Such works tend to “star” people who just don’t give up when going through far more difficult things than you ever have. And the very best examples of this medium explore the various exit ramps people take when they just can’t handle the pressure: drugs, debauched sex, isolation, suicide, anger, etc.
The best examples of the class do not moralize about these topics (especially in an apocalypse!), but instead show it as a natural response to the pressure, an attempted escape. They also show people not tempted by those exit ramps, or who themselves fall into them but eventually overcome it (Saga does this masterfully).
That’s what separates something like The Walking Dead from The Last Ronin (a dystopian TMNT comic).
In The Last Ronin, a hero contemplates suicide (via Seppuku), but in such a way a child probably wouldn’t notice it. The Walking Dead, however, has characters commit suicide, and then shows “the group” trying to survive an apocalypse now also having to grieve because of that person.
Below, you’ll find brief descriptions of my favorite post-apocalyptic worlds and stories in comics. All of these exemplify the “grit through grit” theme discussed above, and each meditates on those exit ramps I mentioned: the detours off Perseverance Highway.
Nearly all of these, in their own ways, have their heroes engage in moments (or extended periods) of self-destruction as a kind of punishment for failure — even when the setback wasn’t their fault (but especially when it was).
We begin with a well-known classic, The Walking Dead, and some discussion of how viewers of the show should approach the comics.
To give you just a hint of how different the TWD show can be from the comics, note that the person mentioned above, who commits suicide in the comic early on, survives longer and is probably my favorite character in the show. And one of my favorite comic character dies early in the show, and lacks their comic counterpart’s charisma!
1. The Walking Dead
by Robert Kirkman
The Walking Dead was originally published in 193 black-and-white issues (only the covers had color), but is currently being reprinted in single-issue “deluxe” color versions. These have not been bundled together into paperbacks or hardcover (presumably yet), so all forms of collected TWD comic volumes only include black-and-white versions of the comic.
This series can be purchased in four 1,000+ page paperbacks, called “Compendiums,” that include 48 of the original comics in each volume (with 49 in the last one): Compendium 1. It can also be purchased in sixteen hardcover volumes, containing twelve issues each: Hardcover Book One.
Beyond those two versions, you can also get eight Hardcover Omnibus editions (the most expensive option), or you can buy the classic “trade paperback” comic size in 32 volumes, each containing one six-issue arc: Volume One.
Many arcs of the show do not appear in the comics, and the comic contains good arcs the show skips. This is because of certain characters not being alive, or present, in one version.
But readers who just want “more” of The Walking Dead might be a bit bored re-reading stories they know the general conclusions to: the group eventually leaves the quarry, farm, prison, etc. in the comics too.
If that’s the case, you might want to consider reading the ending, which is very different from the show’s version of it.
Rest in Peace is Volume 32 of The Walking Dead, containing the six-issue arc about the Commonwealth (don’t Google anything if you don’t want spoilers), and the over-sized last issue that takes place after the main story ends.
That last issue sent off cathartic waves of tears on nearly every page. As someone who considers himself fairly well-read, I’ll say the comic conclusion to The Walking Dead is perhaps my favorite ending in fiction — from Candide’s garden to The Leftovers’ refusal to explain its metaphysics.
I found a good clearance sale on these and they are one of the few things in my store, currently $10 each: https://www.theshepardsonian.com/product-page/the-walking-dead-volume-32-rest-in-peace.
They can also be found on Amazon for $12.77 at the time of writing this.
2. East of West
by Jonathan Hickman
This is the Western version of adult graphic novel apocalypses. Jonathan Hickman tells the story of a quasi-Biblical revelation and the horsemen of the Apocalypse ushering it in.
Prominent themes of self-fulfilling prophecies and selling one’s soul for evil or ease abound. If East of West were retelling the story of the Garden of Eden, Eve would’ve strangled the snake and then seduced God to get out of trouble.
If you’ve ever wondered about the kinds of backroom deals with devils the top dozen most powerful people in the world might make behind closed doors — and if you enjoy both contemporary irreverent takes on religion and politics, and religious classics like Paradise Lost — this one’s for you.
East of West is sold in nine paperback volumes of six issues each (volume 1), three hardcover Omnibus collections (Year 1, 2, and 3), or one compendium of 45 issues.
3. Low
by Rick Remender
Basically Bioshock without the enhancement stims (and plenty of drugs and debauched sex), Low tells the story of Earth’s last humans, far in the future, living in underwater domes beneath the sea to avoid the radiation caused by the sun’s expansion.
Thus part of the Dying Earth subgenre, Low explores a broken family finding themselves, choosing to fight for life instead of succumbing to bodily pleasures, and navigating resentment, doubt, unfulfilled dreams, and (the title of the first volume) the delirium of hope in the face of a dying world and possible end of the species.
I won’t spoil it, but there are some “meta” flourishes throughout, like the appearance of the word “low” in most of the early issues. And the comic is very “in” on the problems with the “quantum mechanics of hope” some characters discuss, as hinted at in the title of the first volume.
This comes in one compendium of 30 issues, five volumes of six issues each (volume 1), or two (beautiful, but expensive) oversized Hardcovers.
I currently have a few volumes of the first edition of the trade paperback in my store: https://www.theshepardsonian.com/product-page/low-volume-1-the-delirium-of-hope
(This isn’t signaling that Low is, say, better than East of West; it’s just that I can’t beat Amazon currently on the latter, or with Y: The Last Man, below).
4. Oblivion Song
by Robert Kirkman
Oblivion Song is a new series by the Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman. It ran from 2018 to 2022, for a total of 36 issues.
Unlike The Walking Dead, Oblivion Song was originally published in color, so the trade paperbacks are all in color.
Oblivion Song tells the story of a truly post-apocalyptic world, somehow metaphysically connected to the realm or dimension in which the apocalypse started (reminiscent of King and Straub’s The Talisman, Minecraft’s Nether realm, or Stranger Things’ Upside Down).
At the level of whole societies, Oblivion Song asks questions of survivors’ guilt: when is it permissible (in the various senses of that term, e.g., politically/financially vs. emotionally) to move on from a tragedy you survived that others might still be caught up in?
Should you (or your group) refuse to move on, for the sake of those who might one day be able to move on with you?
And… what if the people left behind adapted, didn’t know any of the people in your world were still alive (The Leftovers, again), and didn’t want to leave (Inception)?
I have the first two volumes of this in my store:
It can also be found on Amazon in six trade paperbacks like the above, or in one Compendium edition.
5. Y: The Last Man
by Brian K. Vaughan
This one has a charm the others lack — a charm also present in Saga, making me think the charm is Vaughan’s.
I love Yorick, in the way I love Saga’s Alana and Isabelle, and both in a way I don’t love Rick Grimes or any characters in any of the above, really.
I love what Rick has overcome, what he has accomplished and done for his world. And I feel the same with Low’s Stel and various other characters.
But I don’t feel I’ve seen their souls first-hand in the way I do with Alana and Yorick.
(Saga isn’t post-apocalyptic, except for the core family’s plight, and arguably some of their worlds, but I’ll definitely write something about that soon.)
Telling the story of a post-apocalyptic world in which all but one man (Yorick) die, Y: The Last Man is somewhat akin to a modern post-apocalyptic version of Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen (Ecclesiazusae).
The women are left to put the world back together, with noble dreams of proving the “fairer race’s” ability to run the world without the men after an appropriate period of grieving, hopefully rid of so-called “masculine” problems.
But the series then explores how the same issues, thought only caused by men, just so happen to recur in a world without them.
Yorick is a talkative English major, with a pet monkey. He is reminiscent of Negan in TWD (but kind-hearted), or RDJ in the MCU (but not really arrogant).
Yorick can talk long enough for his friends to get him out of trouble — as they explore why only Yorick (and his male monkey) are the only Y chromosomes left on Earth.
Y: The Last Man is sold in one “Omnibus Edition,” two compendiums, 10-12 issue-paperback volumes (or hardcover), ten six-issue trade paperback volumes, and three Absolute Editions.
Disclaimer: All of the Amazon links are “affiliate” or “Amazon Associate” links, meaning I get a small percentage if you buy anything (or if you add something I recommended to your cart and then buy something else, I’ve learned). I don’t recommend things I haven’t read, and I certainly don’t recommend everything I read.