The Walking Dead Graphic Novels

I just read all of the Walking Dead Graphic Novels by Robert Kirkman. I love this series and can't wait to get my hands on the most recent novel book six. I have always loved zombies and this was a very delightful read for me. I have never read graphic novels about zombies although as a child I did enjoy comic books. I read MAD Magazine, Spawn, Xmen and how can you forget the Archie. As a child I did not have much of a attention span to read full books but comics I could read easily and I believe it was due to the visual art. The art also interested me and I would study each storyboard carefully.

Graphic novels are just bigger comic books in my opinion and they are so fun to read. I like the way graphic novels add picture like storyboards to the words and allow for visuals while you are reading. The only downfall I see for that same benefit is the loss of your own visual creativity and personal interpretation to the same events you read about. That is definitely one aspect I always enjoyed about reading; you could read something and in your minds eye see a picture of what you read was happening. It's like creating your own  movie. Graphic novels bring the movie to the book. So that takes the creativity out of it and just shows you the way it is to be seen.

Those who love Zombie movies will enjoy The Walking Dead book series by Robert Kirkman. It has all the typical zombie scenarios but also gives you new situations and interesting characters to follow. I found myself emotional over the deaths of some characters while wishing some were bitten and turned to zombies right away. I found myself reading inbetween calls at work and couldn't wait to get the the next book. I would say for literacy, graphic novels are a definite helper for those who struggle with reading. Because there are pictures in the novel some of the extended reading your would have had to do to gain insight into descriptions of characters and locations, are now removed. This process is shortened because all of those details are shown in that picture. This allows for the only reading to be narrowed down to the conversations and thought processes of the characters in the novel. It is like watching a movie in a foreign language that you are reading the subtitles on, in my opinion it is the same process but in different form. Now you see live images opposed to still shots but you are still reading the words and seeing the visuals. I would recommend reading a graphic novel to anyone who like me had struggled to read long novels. I found after reading comics it made reading longer books easier for me to do and I actually enjoy it now.

-Cassa Arnold