Vampires, Wizards, and Zombies! Oh My!

Vampires, Wizards, and Zombies!  Oh My!  In a world full of Halloween horror flicks, Wizarding shows and diehard Twilight fans, is there room for a cable TV show about another made-believe-being take-over apocalypse?

Like the Twilight saga, the new television show on AMC, The Walking Dead, began in print form.  The Walking Dead came about first as a monthly black and white comic book published by Image Comics.  It was created in 2003 by both writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore (Moore has since been replaced by Charlie Adlard).

The images from the comic and the stills from the TV show do not strike me as entirely unique. 

Anyone has ever watched the hit TV series Heroes on ABC probably can imagine what the comic book images look like.  They strongly resemble Isaac Mendez’s paintings of the end of the world.  However, since Heroes came about three years after The Walking Dead, perhaps it would be more correct to say that Isaac Mendez’s paintings represent The Walking Dead comic book.

The stills already released for The Walking Dead seem very similar to the 2002 Blockbuster movie, 28 Days Later.  The characters always seem to be rushing to or from somewhere and the zombies are easily identifiable because of their mangled and bloody bodies.

In addition to the still images of the two shows representing each other, the story lines seem oddly familiar.

In 28 Days Later a main character, Jim, wakes from a coma in a hospital to find everything he thought he knew about his world to be gone and filled with zombies.  In The Walking Dead a main character, Rick Grimes, wakes up from a coma in the hospital to find the building and town overtaken by zombies.

In 28 Days Later, survivors band together on a journey to another city to find more survivors and to discover a cure, in the process battling the zombies and fighting for their lives.  In The Walking Dead, survivors band together, fight off the zombies and travel to new cities in search of the cure.

All in all, the two seem pretty similar.  But in a world that already seems full of made up beings, violence, crime, and horror flicks, is there room for a regularly programmed TV series about them?  Two recent TV Series’, Fox’s 24 and ABC’s Lost have shown that a plot really can be drug out in a series, literally for years (…well, as long as you don’t mind constant plot twists and other surprises).  The only way to find out for sure will be to tune in!

AMC has chosen the ultimate time slot to premier a zombie apocalypse:  Halloween Night at 10:00pm.  The show was first announced its intent to produce The Walking Dead after buying the rights in August 2010.  Filming began this past May.  As of now, six episodes have been made; hopefully more will be ordered after a successful premier.