For people who aren’t fans of The Walking Dead TV series, the case can still be made that Robert Kirkman’s original comic series, which was published from 2003 to 2019 is worth checking out. The comic differs from the show in a number of different ways – not just in terms of plot trajectory and tone, but also in the impact it has on readers, and its impact on popular culture.

There are any number of reasons a viewer might check out The Walking Dead show and ultimately not stick with it, but for anyone who was interested in, but ultimately disappointed by, the AMC series, Kirkman’s series should still be given a chance as an alternative.

Though the comic originated the best of what the series had to offer, there is much about it that could not be replicated on screen, and this list explores some of the aspects that make it worth engaging with, even for people who dislike the show.

9The Walking Dead TV Show Was A Pop Culture Phenomenon; The Comic Was Groundbreaking Literature

A Generational Comic Book Series

When The Walking Dead television series premiered in 2010, it wasn’t a given that it would be a hit, despite the popularity of Robert Kirkman’s ongoing comic series, which had been running for seven years at that point. Within several years, however, it had become a certified phenomenon, ranking as one of the most popular shows on television alongside the likes of Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones. The series’ popularity continues to this day, in the form of a number of spin-offs, and multimedia extensions of the series, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect what made the original comic stand-out, and worth adapting, at the time.

The Walking Dead TV series’ success reiterated the appeal of the zombie genre in general, and the strength of the show’s source material in particular – but while the pop culture impact of the adaptation has been undeniably strong, it cannot compare to the groundbreaking quality of the original book. Though not the first zombie comic, Kirkman’s Walking Dead redefined what it meant to tell a zombie story, in any medium, while also expanding many readers’ perception of what comic book storytelling could be at the same time.

8The Walking Dead Proved Comics Are A Better Medium For Zombie Stories Than Television

No Limits

The zombie genre, as it is understood today, originated in film, with George Romero’s 1986 movie Night of the Living Dead, but as long as they have appeared on screen, zombie stories have been limited in one way or another: by special effects technology, by standards and practices, or simply by budget. Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead helped to inaugurate a zombie renaissance in the early 2000s by showing how the genre could flourish in comic book form.

While The Walking Dead TV series invariably had to navigate the same restrictions as its cinematic predecessors, Kirkman’s comic was uninhibited by any of these concerns. Kirkman was able to use zombies in unrestricted ways – which led to him using them in unexpected and unprecedented ways. In his comic, Kirkman was able to make zombies more than just scary; he made them a force of nature that his human characters had to live with as much as fight against.

7The Comic’s Violence Is More Visceral, But Less “Realistic”

Kirkman’s Comic Violence Hits Different

Violence is a major part of both The Walking Dead comic and TV show, but there is a tangible difference between violence depicted on screen vs. on the page. Kirkman and artist Charlie Adlard’s violence could be hyper-gruesome, but it was just as often hyperbolic – something particularly apparent with Carl Grimes’ infamous eye injury, for example. The TV adaptation offered a more grounded, “real” depiction of its violence; while likely an appropriate choice for the tone of the show, this also makes it more off-putting to sensitive viewers.

That is to say, readers can emotionally and intellectually detach themselves from the violence on the page in The Walking Dead – they can recognize that it is horrifying, without necessarily connecting it to real-world violence. The Walking Dead TV series is more intense with its gore, in some ways, because of it is live action. For people who shied away from the show because of the violent aspect, the comic offers an alternative – the worst images and moments of gore can be glanced at and then quickly moved on from, rather than having to be sat through, or, alternatively, fast-forwarded through.

6The Walking Dead’s Milestone Moments Were Earned, Rather Than Ordained

The Journey, Not The Destination

The nature of an adaptation – especially an ongoing TV series, adapting an ongoing comic book series – means that there are certain major story beats and tentpole character moments that the adaptation is expected to hit, or otherwise subvert in some ways. Case in point: The Walking Dead TV show did both with its version of Negan’s brutal introduction; in the comics, Negan murders Glenn, while in the show he beats both Glenn and Abraham to death.

The expectations placed on an adaptation create a kind of constant tension that the adapation’s creative team must navigate; ultimately, the story of any adaptation is constituted by what changed, and what stayed the same. With The Walking Dead, this had a way of dominating the discourse around the show, while in Robert Kirkman’s original comic, each major moment was carefully built toward, and felt earned. In other words, nothing felt like it “had” to happen – and in fact, The Walking Dead comic’s most devastating moments tended to be those that emphatically didn’t have to occur, but did because of their dramatic weight.

5Robert Kirkman’s Characters & Dialogue Are The Comic’s Greatest Strengths

Unmatched By The TV Series

The Walking Dead TV series used Robert Kirkman’s comic as source material mostly for its characters, and to varying extents, its plot; while it did occasionally lift tidbits of dialogue or visual cues from the comics, the process of transposing between mediums meant that things like dialogue, especially, had to be totally reinvented to suit the new version of the story. This is natural, but it also means that the greatest attributes of Robert Kirkman’s story are to be found on the page.

That is, Kirkman is an incredibly strong writer when it comes to dialogue, and he has a keen sense of character development; these are the things that truly made The Walking Dead comic worth reading, and they what makes the comic hold up as a worthwhile piece of literature to this day. While the plot of the comic was routinely exciting, it was the way characters acted, reacted, and interacted once Kirkman placed them in a certain situation that provided the true engine for the comic on an issue-by-issue basis, in a way that the TV series was rarely able to fully replicate.

4The Themes Of The Walking Dead Comic Are More Meaningful Than The TV Adaption

The Comic Is About More Than Individuals

The Walking Dead is a story of survival, but in Robert Kirkman’s comic, what started out as a tale of surviving the zombie apocalypse soon became more of a meditation on how humanity might survive in the face of an unexpected existential crisis at the societal level. This theme kept the story invigorated for nearly two hundred issues, and over fifteen years. The Walking Dead TV show, meanwhile, never seemed to get past that first stage, continuing in the vein of a more traditional “zombie survival” story even as it started to introduce more of the conflicts between groups of human survivors that preoccupied the latter stages of the comic.

Again, in both mediums, these themes derive as much from plot as from character, dialogue, and the rest of the elements that constitute a story. Yet while Robert Kirkman was willing to devote entire issues to furthering this theme, the TV series continually placed a greater and greater emphasis on the franchise’s action and horror elements. This helped with its widespread commercial appeal, but it also mitigated its thematic impact, at least in comparison with the source material.

2The Walking Dead Comic Is A Quick Read, Full Of Shock And Suspense

The TV Show Is A Commitment

The Walking Dead TV series ran for eleven seasons, and the franchise now includes multiple spin-offs, all total amounting to hundreds upon hundreds of hours of content to consume. This is a major time investment, and for those viewers who don’t find themselves immediately hooked by the show’s early seasons, it can potentially be difficult to justify. The comic series, despite comprising 193 issues, requires much less investment of time and energy to get through, making it a great alternative for anyone who might be interested in the franchise in theory, but who does not necessarily appreciate the TV show.

Walking Dead comics are a quick read, and they offer regular surprises, shocks, and subversions of expectations, in the manner of the best stories in any genre. Readers can consume entire arcs in a fraction of the time that it takes to watch a Walking Dead TV episode, let alone a full season, and move through the comic expediently – or, in any case, at their own pace. While the comic certainly has its nuances and its subtext worth slowing down and pouring over in more detail, it is reader-friendly enough that a brisk run-through won’t result in the average reader missing too much.

1Unlike The Walking Dead TV Franchise, The Comic Series Actually Had An Ending

The Walking Dead #193 Served As An “Epilogue”

The Walking Dead TV series ended, but its spin-offs and sequel shows have made that conclusion far from definitive; the success of the live-action franchise has, in a sense, become its own worst enemy, in the sense that it has incentivized AMC and the people who make the shows to keep pumping them out in perpetuity. The Walking Dead comic series, by contrast, ended abruptly, and definitively, if open-endedly.

Without giving it away, the penultimate issue of the comic featured a moment that fans had been bracing themselves to deal with for years, while also simultaneously coming to believe would never actually happen. Though Robert Kirkman initially intended to carry on the story well past this point, he ultimately opted to swerve the audience one last time, by making The Walking Dead #193 an epilogue, jumping forward into the future to offer a glimpse of how society would begin to reconstitute itself following the zombie outbreak.

This tied a bow on the long-running themes of the series, and offered a sense of narrative closure, even if it didn’t tie up every loose end left dangling by the decision to stop publishing the comic. Though The Walking Dead TV finale is satisfying in its own ways, fans’ knowledge that the franchise will continue on in myriad different forms took the edge off of it. For fans who want a firm, concrete ending to a story, The Walking Dead comic once again proves a stronger alternative than the show.