The Walking Dead cover art – the unthinkable?? Walking Dead 58 cover art (2009)

As you may know if you visit this blog on any sort of basis other than ‘random’, ‘fleeting’ or ‘never’, I have a thing about ‘The Walking Dead’. That is because it is the best comic book ever, and I am including the usual usual ‘canon’ of ‘Watchmen’, early ‘Spiderman’, the classic X-Men stories like ‘Dark Phoenix’, ‘Miracleman’ etc. I love this book, it is the most human, involving, moving and gripping testament to the human condition commited to a comic.

I love the art work as much as I love the writing, because what the Scottish artist, Charlie Adlard, does with the characters is pour the emotions and weariness and horror into them. You see the grief, madness, anger in their faces. Plus, he handles action scenes brillaintly. Further to that, he knows how to sell a comic by its cover. Here is the latest solicitation for ‘The Walking Dead’, from February 2009 – called ‘The Unthinkable’;

I could speculate on what this means, but if you read the book you probably have a good idea what it could mean (the death of another child in the book, potentially Carl Grimes, Rick’s son). You never know with Kirkman and Adlard and their ‘roll up, roll up; style covers. With the title now coming out on a more regular basis,with issue 56 to ship this week (we hope!!), then we could be finding out what the ‘unthinkable’ is in a couple of months.

Terrific cover, by the way.

Review – The Walking Dead #54

Warning !!!! Spoliers ahead !!!!

The cover of Issue 54 promises ‘All out action!’ and that was also the solicitation byline that accompanied issue 54. The only thing is, what you see on the cover is not what you see in the book – not that that matters, because there is plenty of action as The Walking Dead takes a whole new direction…..

First off, let me say that 2 of the 3 new characters are already getting plenty of focus in their initial appearances in this title. Let me also state that one of them, Sgt Abraham Ford, is looking likely to emerge as the leader of this newly formed collective. He has courage, a soldiers killer instinct and capability and he has a moe human side. There are a few hints of a backstory (he had a wife and kids, he has suffered as much as anyone) and despite his brashness (and his cutting sense of humour, which raised a few smiles)he has a heart. He needs to get his companion Dr Eugene Porter to Washington DC as (he claims) he has the knowledge to help stop the advance of the undead. It seems as if the cause of the outbreak was down to the Military ‘weaponizing’ the advances in science and medicine, and the result was the cataclysmic end of most life on Earth.

As for the cast of regulars, they seem mistrusting of the new arrivals but are eventually persuaded to go on the road with the Doctor, Sgt Ford and Rosita (of whom we know little yet). There is still time for little cameos from Maggie and Glenn, Dale and Rick, Rick and Carl and, most interesting of all, Michonne and Rick. I dont know why, but I get the feeling that after their mutual secret swapping previously, a little more intimacy could be developing in their relationship.

Oh, there is action, and it is great – but no guns. Oh no. That would bring a herd down upon you, and a herd is what you most definately want to avoid. Listen to Sgt Ford – he is the new voice of authority.

The quality of this title remains incredibly high – the story is moving in an exciting new direction, the new characters (especially Sgt Ford) are worthy additions and the established faces all get some space in this issue too. The art from Charlie Adlard is, as ever, perfect for this title. I could imagine no-one else rendering this vision ofhope and despair so well.

That cover was a bit misleading though. But when the stuff inside the covers is as good as this, I think we can allow a little artisitic licence (and marketing) to pass us by.

VHS! VHS! VHS! (primarily 1980s)

Men of a certain age (and women too!) will feel a certain sense of pride / nostalgia / warmth upon seeing pictures of VHS video art, and even more of a feeling of general well-to-do if they are shown pictures or even video of the films the covers were advertising.

Welcome to the death-throes of true exploitation cinema – the video age! Where else, but in the comfort of your own home, were you going to get a chance to see anything like this when you were 13?

The internet can feel like a massive brain dump for those who caught on to the technologies potential as a huge repository for lost youth. But hey, who cares when I can look at old video covers!

So the reason for this post is to specifically pay tribute to those sites who cherish the appalling or brilliant Video cover art of the past. Some of these sites even do reviews of the generally low-budget, usually poor quality films. Some of these sites even have video clips of the films. Please give them a look and you will be rewarded with nothing more than a lot of fluff, but its good to turn your brain off every now and again and just wallow in the sheer pointlessness of it all.

The covers used to illustrate this blog all came from the marvellous http://www.coverbrowser.com (they do comic covers as well!)

Links!!

http://grindhousefilms.blogspot.com – lots of exploitation goodness – reviews, clips, artwork etc

http://soundtracks.cinema-suicide.com/ – a bit off message, but this site details all the soundtrack news from obscure and cult films and is very, very nice to look at.

http://scandyfactory.blogspot.com/ Not for kids! But well worth a look if you don’t mind nudity.

http://critcononline.com/video_companies_cover_art.htm
Originally a paper based fanzine, the site is great, if a bit pre-Y2K in the design of it and it has some quite disturbing (and pointless) scrolling going on.

http://blondezombies.blogspot.com/ – a few covers, some nudity, but for all round fantastic visuals with little rhyme or reason other than it looks good, then this is unbeatable. Trashy, arty, unclean fun (it is in Spanish, but it really isn’t prohibiitve to the fun the site offers if you cannot speak the language).