Robert Kirkman
The Walking Dead

Authentic editorial success of recent years, "The Walking Dead" truly leaves you astonished. Forget about the TV series, which many consider to have strayed too far from the work it's named after, and focus solely on the comic.

Robert Kirkman, in itself, hasn't invented anything new. "The Walking Dead", as the title suggests, is a comic about zombies. Actually, this is partly wrong, let's say it's a comic that also talks about zombies. And let's also say that if you go around saying you read comics with undead in them, you're unlikely to find anyone who takes you too seriously. In our parts, for some reason, comics, all of them, are considered children's stuff, a product directed solely and exclusively at an audience that hasn't yet enrolled in high school. In Japan, they dedicate museums to manga and rightly consider them one of the highest expressions of pop culture in the Land of the Rising Sun. In our parts, things are a bit different, although frankly, it's hard to think that small volumes marked prominently with "reserved for an adult audience" could be read and appreciated by a child who has just finished reading "Topolino". That's how things are, anyway. As we were saying, Kirkman. In himself, he doesn't invent anything new; stories of the undead and humans running away from them are at least forty years old, and perhaps, at least in the cinematic world, someone like Romero has exhausted the topic (and it's truly the case to say so) too much. Where's the novelty? In itself, nowhere, but the truly noteworthy aspect isn't so much what Kirkman tells, but how he does it. Stories of monsters and the like have often lent themselves to multiple levels of reading, one, the more superficial, which is that of pure horror-splatter, and thus almost always pure entertainment, and in some cases a social type, more profound. The small band of survivors painted by Kirkman is an example of this.

Led by the good Rick, an authentic police officer-Samaritan diligent in duty and unwittingly finding himself "leader" of these unfortunate ones, the various characters making their appearance across the pages of the several volumes are nothing more than a metaphor for our society, for what it is going through and what it has been through. Desperate, defenseless, far from any affection, they are driven by pure instinct for survival to draw closer to each other, but distrust, fear, and suspicion will do nothing but constantly test them. In a world that crossed the brink of catastrophe long ago and where Man has returned, in the true sense of the word, to eat Man, Kirkman's protagonists perfectly embody a human race now in an identity crisis, at the end of their strength but still driven, with few exceptions, by pure self-interest, rancor, and envy. A war among the poor that could annihilate them far more than that with the unfortunate zombies, who, if you think about it, only make their appearances sporadically in the pages of the comic. And so one wonders, but who are these "walking dead"? Are we really sure they're only those poor infected who simply don't want to stay underground? Or perhaps it refers to a human race so directed toward rapid decline and the creator of a society in which any founding values have now vanished and where the only law is that of the strongest? What life, what future, in such a world, an extremization of the one in which, perhaps without even realizing it, we are already living and often suffering? Thus, the zombie becomes the embodiment of a future as undesirable as it is (perhaps) inevitable and for this absolutely feared by the many protagonists who, evidently, despite the circumstances, continue to fight to maintain at least a shred of true humanity in a world that is falling apart, managing, sometimes, even to experience feelings of affection, friendship, and why not, love among them. What future, then, for our heroes? Will Rick and the others manage not so much to find ultimate salvation but at least a minimum of stability? This, it seems, Kirkman himself wonders, now engaged for years with a series that has achieved such a stunning and evidently unexpected success, among awards and skyrocketing sales.

Excellent drawings, by Tony Moore at first and then Charlie Adlard, captivating stories and deep and complex characters enough to give everything a credible and mature angle, with the various protagonists constantly forced to face a world without more certainties first and foremost themselves, even before having to face what surrounds them. In Italy, it is published by Saldapress, in monthly volumes containing four episodes of the original American series, and in larger volumes that include six. If I were you, I wouldn't let it slip away; initially, given the large number of characters and situations, it might be a bit daunting, but once you start reading it, you can't put it down.