Page vs Screen - The Walking Dead

Page vs Screen - The Walking Dead

WARNING THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD!!

The spoiler pirate has warned you

Many comics in recent years have been adapted into TV shows and movies mostly being incredibly successful with movies like The Avengers, Iron Man, Batman The Dark Knight, Arrow, The Flash and Captain America to name a few. One of the most successful comic to TV adaptions has been the Image comic The Walking Dead and lets face it if you aren't watching it yourself you know at least 3 people that do.

The show and the comic will be compared on 3 categories, Story, art/visuals and characters

Story

The TV show seems to be fairly similar with the comic in the general feel of the story which is just a group of people, who honestly don't really know what they are doing, trying to survive in a worse hell than anyone can imagine although I do feel that the comic seems to have a bit more direction in a sense its trying to go somewhere not just watching a bunch of dirty people freaking out all the time. A huge criticism of the show is that it isn't as intense as the comic, which of course is a common complaint when anything is translated to film/TV, but for the themes I honestly think the show does pretty well with the content it is dealing with. In the comic there are twin boys called Ben and Billy who are about 8 or 9 years old, Ben murders his brother and then cuts up his body and simply responds with "Don't worry he's going to come back. I didn't hurt his brain" when discovered. Now I honestly can't see a way that the show could do that even within an R rating.
The winner is: The comic

Characters

The characters from the comic and the characters from the TV show are completely different, some characters from the show do not exist in the comic, such as Daryl & Merle, and the personalities of the characters are not even close to the same. I find some of the really strong and independent characters, especially many of the women, are turned from strong and resourceful characters into complete morons that make terrible decisions on a regular basis. The comic has very human characters that aren't perfect but really do try to make the best of their situation but do still have problems, they make bad plans, have an awful lot of grief driven sex and have mental breaks. The characters in the TV show have the same names but I find it easier not to think of the TV characters as the same as the characters from the comic as it is just irritating. My main issue with the characters from the TV show is Andrea, in the comic she is a tough as nails, loyal friend who's a crack shot with a high powered rifle where as in the TV show she is a whiny, fool who even after she finds out that the Governor (who is waaaay toned down for the show but I suspect that was mainly because they wouldn't be able to show some of the horrible things he did) sexually assaulted Maggie & had Glen beaten still goes back to him, something that comic Andrea would never ever do.
The winner is: The comic

Visual/Art

The comic's art is both gruesome and chilling but the greatest impact the art has is sometimes in what you don't see, one of the greatest examples of this being when Carol slits her wrists and all you see is a a bleeding hand and the terrified Sophia huddled in the corner. The show has just the most amazing makeup special effects and have some of the best looking zombies to ever grace the screen. The zombies are rotten, dried out, sun damaged and filthy, which is what you would expect from a dead body left out in the sun for weeks/months. One of the best examples of the shows fantastic zombies is the half eaten "Bicycle girl" from the first episode.
The winner is: The show

Bicycle Girl is one of the most iconic zombies from the show

Overall winner:

The Walking Dead Comic

The winner today is the Comic due to superior story and characters, now this is not to say that the show is bad but I feel the comic has a far more realistic representation of how people would react, both good and bad, during the collapse of society and the story has a much more clear cut direction that it is heading. The show looks fantastic with it's terrifying zombies and dilapidated towns but the visual look wasn't enough for the win this time.