The Walking Dead: Miles Behind Us

Robert Kirkman

Robert Kirkman has begum what promises to be the next big thing in comics: The Walking Dead. This second volume of the series follows Rick and his small band of survivors as they break camp and try to find somewhere safer to rebuild their lives. As with the first volume, Days Gone Bye, Miles Behind Us spends much more time focusing on the human factor and how peoples' relationships to one another change in the face of sudden, worldwide devastation. Kirkman has done an excellent job of drawing the psyches of his characters, and it makes the series almost compulsive reading.

Miles behinds us does, though, suffer slightly in comparison to Days Gone Bye. There are a couple of times when the reader gets the sense that characters are leaving the story arc simply because they're no longer convenient (this is the case with one character in particular; it'll be obvious, when you get to that bit), and some of the new characters introduced aren't given nearly enough time to develop before we don't see them any more. However, there's a good deal going on here, and one thinks that the book would have been twice as long if Kirkman had devoted that much time to them. Still, I would have much preferred a two hundred seventy-two page book and more depth in the minor characters. Not that that'll stop me from reading the third volume as soon as I possibly can; The Walking Dead is definitely worthwhile stuff.