The year of 2010 is the year that many hardcore fans of “The Walking Dead” were finally able to see their favorite comic book series come to life on the small screen with an incredible cast of actors. Free of clichés, free of science fiction doldrums and flash, fans who have stuck by the comic book series since the beginning were finally able to see their fantasies realized in an epic television series. And much like the comic book, every episode of the first season tested the fan’s devotions by completely twisting and mangling every sub-plot imaginable to the point where the band wagoners were shaken off and moved on to other things, while the true fans and new fans stuck by it.
For the past four films, director Paul WS Anderson has taken what was once a very entertaining horror franchise and turned it in to a series of movies fetishizing his wife and doing nothing more than further his muse-like view on her. We nearly saw her naked in the first movie, she was a bad ass in the second, a goddess in the third movie, and in the fourth we’re given an army of Milla’s, presumably a concept Anderson got his jollies off of. That said “Afterlife” is a movie that continues to drag on this wasted concept and posit the question: Why is Umbrella continuing their research if about ninety-nine percent of the world consumed by hellfire and the walking dead? What do they further have to gain beyond being evil for the sake of being evil?
Christopher Golden assembles a myriad of assorted tales about the walking dead, all of which combine to form one of the strongest combinations of excellent authors and variations on zombies and the undead. While the entire book isn’t a complete success in adapting visions of the walking dead with engrossing characters, “The New Dead” will make a great time filler with some truly strong stories and mini-epics in one compendium. I had a great time sifting through each story and I think most fans of the walking dead will, too. These are only a few of the ones we thought warranted mentioning.