CREDIT: SUBMITTED
Robert Kirkman’s series The Walking Dead celebrated its 10th anniversary on October 8.

Ten years ago, comic book writer Robert Kirkman released a 22-page black-and-white volume, chronicling the confusion of one man as he awoke from a coma to find that the world around him had drastically changed and his family and friends had all disappeared, replaced by a world of zombies.

While this sounds like the plot of the majority of zombie stories, Kirkman's The Walking Dead has managed to set itself apart in a medium that seems to be overcrowded in recent years. With successful video game series Dead Rising and Left 4 Dead selling millions of copies in the latter 2000s, and films such as 28 Days Later (I know, not exactly zombies!) and the Dawn of the Dead remake of 2004 igniting the genre to a popularity to a whole new generation, the comics could have easily become lost among the many other similar stories.

The Walking Dead primarily follows the story of small town sheriff Rick Grimes as he awakens from a coma and discovers that a zombie virus has taken over the area, and immediately sets out to find his wife Lori and young son Carl. As he eventually makes his way to Atlanta and finds them, as well as a band of survivors, Rick and his companions must find a way to survive in the new world, combating both the living and the dead.

It is this focus on character that has set the series apart from the other zombies, as Kirkman has created very realistic human characters, turning the comic series into a sort of modern-day Lord of the Flies, a character study on how low humanity is capable of sinking for the purposes of survival. In its decade of publication, the series has seen over 100 named characters come and go as the pressures of survival begin to affect the protagonists in different ways, drastically changing their personalities and not always for the better.

While boasting one of the strongest continuing stories in comics, The Walking Dead, or any comic for that matter, would not have been able to reach the level of success that it has without a strong artist bringing the world to life and drawing the reader in, and Kirkman's partner Charlie Adlard (who replaced original artist Tony Moore after issue #7) has succeeded in that regard, no small feat when today's comic books are often an explosion of colour.

Adlard's work, and the context of the story however, mean that the artwork in The Walking Dead is violent, and almost disturbingly detailed, with zombies ripping out throats, people being shot at close range and even beloved characters being beaten to death, the world that has been created is one that is sometimes all too real. The two driving forces behind one of modern entertainment's most successful stories however have stubbornly remained faithful to their vision, which will hit its most frenzied time yet. The fourth season of the television adaptation recently premiered, and in November a new comic storyline entitled All Out War will kick off, and will see an issue released every two weeks as opposed to monthly.

Robert Kirkman's imagination seems to have no end to the terrible situations that he is able to put his survivors through, and time will tell if The Walking Dead will be able to continue on its storyline for another decade, but for long-time fans and new readers alike, it is certainly a journey worth taking.