The Rhyming Dead (Analyzing Comics 101: Page Schemes)

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Chris Gavaler

The Walking Dead Volume 1 “Days Gone Bye” is anti-feminist, anti-government, pro-gun, libertarian fantasy propaganda. So pretty much my opposite on the political spectrum. And yet I teach it every year in my first-year writing seminar. It helps that it pairs so well with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (which is nihilistic, anti-everything fantasy propaganda). It helps even more that I like the Walking Dead TV show so much. I always assign open essay topics, so I get a range of gender critiques, pro-family analysis, and (my favorite) the meaning of Rick’s hat. That one requires a deeper level of visual analysis, and that’s what I want to focus on today.

On a previous blog, I laid out my thoughts on layout, and now I want to apply them a little more systematically to one specific comic: The Walking Dead #1 (October 2003) by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. I’ll work through the issue page-by-page first, then follow up with a page scheme analysis: how the layouts of separate pages combine for issue-wide effects. I’m working with the general principle that pages have base patterns, and when those patterns repeat, their pages relate at a formal level (they visually rhyme) and so the content of those pages are connected too.

PAGE 1:

Irregular 4-row layout, with top and bottom full-width panels. The bottom panel is also unframed and merges with the underlying page panel, giving it additional significance.

PAGES 2-3:

Full-page panel and a regular 3×3. Often a comic establishes a single base pattern, but the 3×3 contradicts the 4-row (and the implied 4×2) of page one. The full-page panel is ambiguous since it can divide into any layout pattern, and so it is an effective bridge between the two base patterns.

PAGES 4-5:

The irregular 3-row begins with 3 panels, but then switches to a 2-panel bottom row that breaks the 3×3 pattern established on the previous page. The next page is also a 3-row, but since the top, full-width panel could divide into three panels, I’d say the page is still using 3×3 as its implied base pattern.

PAGES 6-7:

Another full-page panel (on the left side of the spread like the full-page panel of page two, so the positioning rhymes as well) and another 3-row with a top, full-width panel that implies a 3×3 base pattern, same as page five (which was also on the right side of the page spread, so another positioning rhyme).

PAGES 8-9:

And here Moore and Kirkman completely break any base patterning. The bottom row would suit a 3×3, but the top two-thirds could suit an implied 4×2. The top two-thirds also shift to an irregular 2-column layout, with the first column combing three panels to establish the reading path for the paneled second column. The next page then switches back to an irregular 3-row. The top, full-width panel is unframed and merges with the underlying page panel which slowly darkens to black gutters, a motif continued on the next page.

PAGES 10-11:

Another atypical page, a 3-row but now with a bottom, 4-panel row, which is a new layout element. Like the preceding page, the top, full-width panel is unframed and merges with the page panel which darkens to black gutters again. The next page returns to a regular 3×3, same as page three.

PAGES 12-13:

A 3-row and implied 3×3, since both the top unframed full-width panel and the middle framed full-width panel would divide accordingly. The implied 3×3 is further suggested by the actual 3×3 of the facing page.

PAGES 14-15:

Atypical again. The bottom row partly evokes 3×3, but the panels are closer to half-page height, and they are also insets over the full-page panel image that dominates the top half of the page. The next page is an irregular 3-row, though now with a bottom, 4-panel row (as first seen on page ten).

PAGES 16-17:

Two irregular 3-row pages, with a total of three full-width panels, two 3-panel rows, and one 2-panel row. (That all black background at the bottom of 16 is interesting, but not part of today’s focus.)

PAGES 18-19:

More irregular 3-rows, with three 3-panel rows, two full-widths, and one 2-panel. The second page repeats the exact layout of pages five and seven, with a top, full-width implying the 3×3.

PAGES 20-21:

Two more 3-rows with an implied 3×3 base. The first page repeats page nineteen, seven, and five, and the second partially echoes page fourteen, though here the top two-thirds of the page fit a 3×3 pattern by combining two implied rows into a single unframed panel. Also the the bottom panels are insets over the full-page panel which darkens into black gutters–so close to page fourteen, but not an exact match, more of a slant rhyme.

PAGES 22-23:

The fifth iteration of an irregular 3-row with a 3×3-implying top full-width panel. The second page’s irregular 4-row also brings back the implied 4×4 of page one, now with black gutters.

PAGE 24:

Mostly an irregular 4-row, though the first panels of rows one and two are combined into a half-page column, the only column seen since page eight. This is also the sixth page to include black gutters.

So how does any of this combine into any meaningful analysis?

Since well over half of the pages (fourteen or fifteen depending on how you feel about page twenty-one) are irregular 3-rows, there’s a dominant base pattern. Eleven of those pages follow a flexible 3×3, and the two full-page panels can be added to that count too. Those two full-pages deserve special attention, rhyming the two formally largest moments in the narrative layout: Rick waking up for the first time after his apocalypse-triggering injury, and the first, apocalypse-signifying depiction of zombies. Pages fourteen and twenty-one are the next visually significant, with their top panels dominating more than half of their layouts: Rick being struck by a shovel, and a zombie appearing behind a fence. Frankly, the shovel shot seems a bit gratuitous to me since the moment is not that narratively important (a character-introducing misunderstanding patched up by the next page), but page twenty-one is key to Rick’s development since he learns not to waste a bullet by killing a zombie unnecessarily, setting up his character-defining mercy killing on the concluding pages. The two concluding pages also rhyme with page one, creating implied 4×2 bookends to the issue. The black gutter motif also begins on pages nine and ten, when the bicycling zombie is introduced, further linking to page twenty-one’s black gutters and harmless zombie.

So the page scheme shapes Rick’s character development in different ways than just the words and image content. There are other angles of interpretation available here (I’d tackle all of those top full-width panels next, or maybe those two brief columns on pages eight and twenty-four), but the point is that layout doesn’t simply transmit narrative. The formal qualities shape the narrative, adding meanings and relating moments that in terms of story alone are not directly linked.

Do You Teach Banned Comics?

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Qiana Whitted

Lynda Barry (2008)

Earlier this year I was asked to lead a workshop on comic books for 4^th and 5^th graders. I had organized activities like this for kids in the past, but never for a group quite this young. So I trimmed a few points in my presentation notes about comics history and highlighted examples of how the art form is used to tell different kinds of stories. I simplified the drawing exercises and group activities in order to encourage the students to make comics of their own.

While I was preparing for the workshop, news broke that that South Carolina House Ways and Means Committee had approved budget cuts against the College of Charleston that would effectively penalize the school for assigning Alison Bechdel’s comics memoir, Fun Home, for their freshman reading program. The state representative that proposed the bill claimed that the comic’s depiction of homosexuality “could be considered pornography” and that the college’s selection was tantamount to “pushing a social agenda.” Shocked and outraged by this move, I complained to friends and colleagues. But I also looked again at the packet of course materials I had prepared for the elementary school students in my comics workshop. Along with a new Adventure Time comic, I had included excerpts from Krazy Kat, Astonishing X-Men, American Splendor and a short comic by Lynda Barry. It was this last one that began to worry me.

Barry reflects upon the self-doubt and judgment that can paralyze creative expression in “Two Questions” from her 2008 collection, What It Is. She recalls the playfulness and experimental energy of her own childhood drawings, drained by the onslaught of those two questions: “Is this good?” and “Does this suck?” The doodles, vines, and swirls of text that surround Barry in the four-page comic make her internal conflict visible in a way that beautifully illustrates the interplay of the word and image. But reading it again, I became concerned about how the vernacular phrase “Does this suck?” would be received. I worried, too, about the moment when Barry’s describes the monstrous manifestation of her insecurity as a pimp that says, “I don’t steal nothing from the girl except her mind!” Would I be prepared to address these references and if asked, to explain the sexual connotations that shaped their meaning? What might their parents think? Or the South Carolina state legislature? Would I allow my own kids to read this comic?

As it turned out, the workshop was incredibly successful. The kids were enthusiastic and full of ideas, excited mostly about superhero comics and anime, but open to learning about other genres too. During the first break one started talking about The Walking Dead. Other kids sat up in their chairs and nodded in agreement. I was stunned by how many knew (or claimed to know) the comic and the TV series. Soon they were reeling off their favorite characters in comics. Deadpool was a huge hit, along with the Dark Knight (the movie). A couple had read Watchmen. But some of these comics are incredibly violent, I teased – do your parents know you’re reading this? The students nodded and shrugged, although there were a few guilty smiles.

By the end of our day together, it became clear to me that these 4^th and 5^th graders had been handling more mature material than I could have ever imagined. They negotiated the complexities of the page impressively too. We had fun playing around with interpretations of aesthetic and formal elements in our readings of comics. I realized that Barry’s “Two Questions” would not be too much of a challenge for this group — that is, if I had let them read it. I had taken the story out of the course packet at the last minute and told myself that I would find something better. I never did.

The Walking Dead

Comics and graphic novels are the focus of this year’s Banned Books Week, an initiative supported by organizations such as the American Library Association and Comic Book Legal Defense Fund to celebrate the freedom to read by calling attention to titles that are being challenged in schools and libraries across the country. That Jeff Smith’s Bone, Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Craig Thompson’s Blankets, and other comics by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, and Howard Cruse have been targeted may come as little surprise to comic book readers and critics. Often the issue of age-appropriateness is the central question for the complaints against the violence, sexuality, or cultural conflict depicted in these titles. I’ve had the opportunity to teach many of the comics that have been challenged over the years in my university classes where I try to approach controversial material as a source for an enriching exchange of ideas and to consider how discomfort can enable deeper inquiry into the world we all share.

But when I had the chance to put these ideals into action with a younger audience through “Two Questions,” I made a different, safer choice. It felt all too complicated, especially since I was dealing with elementary school students and their parents in a volatile political moment. I didn’t want to invite unnecessary scrutiny or cause problems for the program director that asked me to teach the workshop. My excuses all sounded reasonable at the time. The proposal to defund the College of Charleston’s first year reading program did not succeed in its original form, but I had reacted as if it had. Now I feel more than ever that I cheated the students by censoring my own reading list. Does this suck? Yes. Yes, it does.

The horrible irony about all this is that creative freedom is exactly what Barry’s comic is about. Her images speak directly to the risks we don’t take and the limits we place on ourselves out of fear. Ultimately the comic celebrates the courage to make mistakes, to create even when you don’t have answers to the two questions at the ready: “To be able to stand not knowing long enough to let something alive take shape! Without the two questions so much is possible.” It would have been a terrific lesson for those kids, but now I guess it’s turned into a different kind of learning experience for me.

So in honor of Banned Books Week, I’m asking about your encounters with banned or challenged comics. Are there controversial comics that you have chosen not to read or share with others? If you’re an instructor, how do you assess the risks and rewards of using this material in the classroom? How do your students respond? And while you’re thinking: read Lynda Barry’s “Two Questions” here.

How the Walking Dead Became the Realest Show on Television

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Christa Blackmon

The Walking Dead, the most popular show on television, has made a name for itself being a dark, cinematic, and wildly successful story about a zombie apocalypse on the cable leviathan AMC. And with numerous accolades from mainstream industry awards like the American Film Institute (twice), the People’s Choice Awards, the Television Critics Association, and even a Golden Globe nomination, a rare feat for any science fiction or horror series, it’s become a juggernaut franchise any network would envy. It has become so popular, in fact, that AMC dedicates a full hour of its schedule to a live post-show analysis hosted by Nerdist mogul Chris Hardwick called The Talking Dead, and featuring a wide range of celebrity fan guests.
But, I hope, for all its achievements critics may one day remember the franchise not solely for its popular success, but rather in its ability to build empathy for real-world survivors of tragedy.

Science fiction at its best allows us to tell stories about the world in which we live in ways that transcend politics and prejudice. Fantastic elements like zombies, aliens, or supernatural monsters all carry elements of our deepest fears and anxieties about the world we live in. And through these devices we can deal with human issues like guilt, redemption, or morality in safe, palatable ways while providing seemingly mindless entertainment for the masses.

The Walking Dead is set in contemporary Georgia shortly after a deadly epidemic has lead to the complete downfall of civilization. A former sheriff, main character Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln, navigates through devastated suburban landscapes filled with “walkers” (the word zombie is never mentioned), the reanimated dead who seek only to consume the flesh of the living. Rick, his wife Lori and son Carl join with other survivors in risking ravenous encounters with walkers to find temporary shelters and clean food. Contact with other humans carries its own dangers as some groups make it clear they would rather steal, rape, or kill to just to give themselves an advantage for another day. The world of The Walking Dead is rife with desperation, not unlike current war zones in Central Africa and Syria and natural disaster regions in Southeast Asia.

In 2012 Sarah Wayne Callies, who played Lori, became a Voice for the International Rescue Committee. Last year she joined a campaign to raise awareness for Syrian refugees, visiting with survivors of sexual violence in Domiz. Although she hasn’t made any direct parallels from her humanitarian advocacy to the problems her character faced, the similarities are there for anyone who watches the show.

In the second season, when Lori discovers that she is pregnant, she wrangles with the decision of whether or not to abort the child. Is this the kind of world she wants to bring a new life into? She fears for more than just her children’s safety, dreading that her son’s quick adaptation to their new reality means he will lose his humanity. In the episode “Killer Within” she begs Carl not to lose his pre-apocalyptic sense of right and wrong, pleading “don’t let the world spoil you.”

The theme of psychological trauma in children also continued this season, coming to a dramatic head in perhaps the show’s most shocking episode yet, “The Grove.” I won’t spoil it for you, but let’s just say we can take solace in the fact that children in our world do not have to suffer alone and psycho-social services can be available.

Actress Danai Guirira, the katana-wielding Michonne, is also no stranger to the refugee narrative. Born to African immigrants in the US, she grew up in Zimbabwe and has been vocal about the unique experience of Africans. Danai is also co-founder of Almasi Collaborative Arts, an organization that fosters cooperation between American and Zimbabwean artists and empowers Africans to tell their own stories. Her professional encounters with Liberian women in war certainly influence her portrayal on screen. “The parallels of The Walking Dead world and a war zone– that idea was very resonant for me,” she told Rolling Stone last fall.

The show’s fourth season became even more poignant in depicting the plight of its characters in a way that rings true to real-world crises. After our heroes set up a permanent settlement, the story moves away from conflicts with other survivors. Instead they must focus on growing their own food, collecting clean water, continuing their children’s education, substance abuse as a coping mechanism, and combating a serious outbreak of disease in their new home.

The character of Hershel, played by veteran actor Scott Wilson, is the embodiment of a peacebuilder. He inherited the role of the group’s conscience following the exit of another white-haired elder, Dale, who functioned as a more explicit voice for justice and human rights. While Rick and Michonne struggle with opening themselves up to help others, afraid of the pain that will come when they ultimately fail, Hershel is an unending fountain of mercy. During the plague storyline he gives an impassioned plea for the afflicted to bear together. “You take a drink of water, you risk your life,” he he says. “The only thing you can choose is what you’re risking it for.”

In the episode “Internment,” Hershel endeavors to give the infected hope and comfort, referencing John Steinbeck’s quote about a sad soul killing faster than any germ. It is in contrast to others in the group who want only to separate the sick from the healthy, and even one character who took murderous measures to keep the disease from spreading. While waiting for treatment to arrive — and there is no guarantee it will — he exposes himself to the plague to bring food and water and even hand pump oxygen into a man’s lungs. Compassion fatigue? This man has never heard of it. As we see everyday in the stories of real-life refugees, Hershel stands out because of his resilience: stuck in a dire situation, his character shows that there are still those who rise to take care of others

It is a story not unlike a real life doctor in Somalia, Hawa Abdi, who turned her family’s farmland into a camp for over 90,000 internally displaced persons. She and her daughters work hard not only to feed and provide medical care for these people, but also to protect them from further violence and exploitation at the risk of her own family.

Logically, The Walking Dead’s themes come from the evolution of decades of television storytelling. Social and political issues have always had a place in science fiction. It was the original Star Trek series that set the precedent in America for the genre to do more than just entertain. At a time of social upheaval in the 1960’s, the series boldly represented humanist ideals of equality and social justice. While the show was slow to hit its peak, its journey from a short-lived television series to a massive media empire is what paved the way for socially responsible and commercially successful science fiction in America.

As audiences developed a taste for grittier dramas more grounded in the real world, science fiction film and television continued to keep pace. More recent ventures that tackle global issues with great commercial and critical success include Battlestar Galactica (2004), District 9 (2009), and Catching Fire (2013).

The Peabody Award-winning Battlestar Galactica had a similar post-apocalyptic survival set up, but with humans battling an advanced race of robots. Producers Ronald D. Moore, an alumnus of the Star Trek shows of the 1990’s, and David Eick mixed themes of the scarcity of basic human needs like clean food, water, and medical care with much more provocative nods to hot button American political issues like torture, terrorism, and the occupation of Iraq. Eick and Moore appeared alongside stars Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell at a special UN panel on the show’s themes of war, dialogue and reconciliation, and human rights in 2011.

Neill Blomkmap’s District 9, an insectoid alien version of apartheid South Africa, received four Academy Award nominations including Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. Blomkamp followed his debut with another overtly political story with Elysium, about a future Earth where humans are violently divided by access to healthcare and economic disparity.

Catching Fire, the sequel to the powerhouse teen sensation The Hunger Games, took a deliberate darker and more political turn into the series. Katniss Everdeen, played by Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence, is a reluctant symbol of a resistance against a brutal totalitarian regime. Her motivation, to keep her loved ones safe, is so simple that she could represent the voices of any number of people power movements.

The creator of the comic book series and showrunners of The Walking Dead have never mentioned any global inspiration for the stories they tell. But familiarity with refugees isn’t a requirement for telling a compelling, human story about real people who have lost everything and still persevere. American popular media is in dire need of stories that help us build empathy with the rest of the world, and science fiction dramas like The Walking Dead, that feature realistic storylines and a diverse cast and crew, can help fill that void.
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Christa Blackmon is a graduate of American University and the former Senior Editor of Palestine Note. She is currently a freelance writer on peace and conflict issues in Washington, DC. You can find her on Twitter at @theodalisque.

Playing Narrative, Part 1

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Isaac Butler

Back in 2011, I wrote on my own blog about storytelling in video games, and whether or not they are a narrative art form, a post that led me to wonder:

[D]o video games really want to be known as a narrative art form?

I find this question far more interesting than Ebert’s question about whether they’re art or not. (Simple answer: some are, some aren’t!)

Right now, video games are in a sweet spot. Games like Heavy Rain and Mass Effect 2 can come out and gain a certain amount of cachet and sales because of their sophisticated deployment of game mechanics to complexly explore genre. At the same time, when people question the racial politics of Resident Evil 5 or look at the truly execrable pro-torture narrative of Black Ops, gamers (and game critics) can retreat behind “Hey, it’s only a game!”

Sure enough, over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed more talk about the quality of stories that games tell and the phenomena of ludonarrative dissonance, or the disconnect between the gameplay experience and the narrative experience of a title. Most of these conversations tend to coalesce around fretting about violence. In the Uncharted games, rakish hero Nathan Drake kills something like six to eight hundred people whilst treasure hunting around the globe. The emotional resonance of Bioshock: Infinite’s clever universe-hopping maze of a plot is undermined by the constant need to mow down everyone who gets in your way. In fact, the term ludonarrative dissonance apparently originates with this blog post from Clint Hocking about the first Bioshock game, in which he writes that the contrast between the selfishness of the game play (it’s a first person shooter) and the anti-selfishness polemics of the plot (it’s a takedown of objectivism) contrast to such a degree that it wrecks the game.

I personally find the concept of ludonarrative dissonance interesting for thinking and discussing video games but do not find it to be quite the magic bullet that game critics seem to think it is. Basically, I believe that, in part due to the history of how games have aesthetically developed, game players are quite used to compartmentalizing gameplay from story, tending to either view the former as the task one must accomplish to get the latter, or viewing the latter as the increasingly cumbersome speed bumps that interrupt the former.

While the violent gameplay is the least interesting part of Bioshock:Infinite, I’m not sure that most video game players think that they’re killing people as they play it from a narrative perspective any more than watchers of Looney Tunes feel Elmer Fudd’s physical pain in any kind of serious way. Aesthetics matter, after all, and Bioshock:Infinite is a candy colored cartoon wonderland filled with nonrealistic character portraits. Most of the human extras you encounter throughout the world are more like animatronic dolls than people. It’s also worth noting that violence is in many ways woven into the DNA of videogames, much as snark and assumptions of bad faith are woven into the DNA of online discourse.

That said, ludonarrative dissonance will prove a worthwhile concept if it leads to better games and better narrative mechanics within them, and over the past year, at least, this appears to be happening. Two recent works, Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us have done a remarkable job of integrating gameplay mechanics, story, and theme, pointing the way to a possible new maturity in the field. Yet at the same time, both are built out of sturdy video game genres. The Walking Dead is a classic puzzle-adventure game, while The Last of Us focuses on the kind of stealth-action familiar to players of Metal Gear Solid, Deus Ex or the Tenchu franchise. They never lose their game-ness[1], yet remain satisfying, emotionally engaging, thought provoking narrative experiences[2].

The Walking Dead even manages to upstage both the preexisting source material (the comics by Robert Kirkman) and the blockbuster TV adaptation on AMC. In it, you play Lee Everett, a recently convicted murderer (and former college professor) being transported to prison when the cop car carrying you hits a zombie. Shortly thereafter, you take on a young girl named Clementine, whose parents are in another city and whose babysitter has gone all let-me-eat-your-brains on you[3]. As you and Clementine struggle to survive, you eventually come upon other survivors and have a series of difficult trials that brings you both across the state of Georgia.

On a gameplay level, much of The Walking Dead revolves around the normal puzzle-adventure michegas, where you have to figure out what action and items will get you from point A to point B in the plot. Occasionally, you also have to kill zombies or hostile humans. Neither of these functions are particularly remarkable. And at least one puzzle, which involves figuring out the right things to say to get someone to move out of your way so that you can press a button, is seriously infuriating. What makes the game work, however, is the way that character, emotion and choice function within the narrative. Like many games today, The Walking Dead presents the player with multiple narrative choices via either forcing you to take one of a series of mutually exclusive actions or choosing dialogue options in conversations.

Telltale’s stroke of genius was to insert a timer into these decisions. Normally when you reach a major choice in a game, it will wait for you. You can think about it for a while, perhaps peruse a walkthrough online that will tell you the outcome of the choices, and then make it. You can perform a cost-benefit analysis in other words, thinking about it purely in game terms. In The Walking Dead, you have a very limited time to make each decision, and as a result, the decisions become a reflection of your personality, or the personality of Lee as you’ve chosen to play him[4]. Perhaps you think Lee should tell people he’s a convicted murderer, because honesty is the best policy. Or perhaps you think you should hide it from people because you’re a good guy and you don’t want people pre-judging you. Perhaps you should tell people you’re Clementine’s father. Or her babysitter. Perhaps you raid that abandoned station wagon filled with food. Or perhaps you sit back, willing to go hungry in case the car belongs to fellow survivors.

Many of your choices involving brokering disagreements between two survivors named Kenny and Lily, who are both, to put it politely, assholes. Kenny, a redneck father, will do anything for the survival of his family (including betray you), and will forget any nice thing you do for him (including saving his life) the second you disagree with him. Lily, the defacto leader of the group, is belligerent, domineering, and frequently sticks up for her racist shitbag dad. Being a good middle child, I kept opting for choices that recognized the validity of their points of view and tried to form consensus. Due to their aforementioned assholitry, they both hated me by halfway through the game. One of them even told me I had to man up and start making decisions or what was the point of having me along.

The decisions tend to function like this in the game. Unlike in most games with choice mechanics, there aren’t morally good and bad choices coded blue and red. And unlike old school adventure games, the choices you make in the plot won’t lead to fail states. They simply are things that you’ve done, and they ripple out throughout the game, shifting (in ways both subtle and non) how the story progresses, how people treat you, and what choices you have remaining to you.

None of this exactly explains what a remarkable achievement The Walking Dead game turned out to be. So let me try some other ways: It’s the only game I’ve played that has reduced every person I know who has played it to tears at least twice. It’s the only game I’ve ever played where the characters are so clearly and humanly written that I finished one chapter of it and flew into a rage over what one of the characters did to me[5].

Part of this is because there are limits to what your choices can achieve. Due to the realities of game making and the limitations of the engine that’s running underneath TWD’s hood, the number of paths you can take in the game is finite. There are truncation points in the branching narrative to keep things under control. As a result, certain things will happen no matter what you do and certain characters will die. There are things you cannot stop from occurring in the game, fates that, like the protagonist in a play by Euripides, are inexorable and horrible all at once.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. Robert Kirkland’s two great innovations in the zombie apocalypse genre—telling a story with no finite ending and making zombieism inevitable[6]—are what gave early issues of the comic book their thematic sizzle, turning the saga into a story about how we confront our mortality and an ongoing essay into whether death made life more meaningful or a sick joke. Sadly, after a difficult and necessary foray into the issue of survivor’s guilt, the comics are largely now about how difficult and noble it is to be the White Man in Charge who makes the tough decisions and often feature Rick Grimes walking around having other people tell him how awesome he is while he gets ever more self-pitying.

The video game, meanwhile, does a superior job of exploring the themes of its source material, because the choice mechanics literalize those themes. By removing fail states from the game (like most contemporary video games, it is literally impossible to lose The Walking Dead) and eschewing simple morality in designing the choices, TWD constantly forces you to think about why you are making the choices you make. As you decide whether or not to save the female reporter and firearms expert or a male hacker dweeb you may find yourself suddenly thinking Oh crap, I have to choose between one of these people. And they both seem so nice. But, well, this is the apocalypse, so electronics aren’t going to be as necessary. And that reporter is a markswoman. And at some point the world is going to need to be repopulated, so I suppose I need to save as many potential sexual partners as possible. So I guess I’m going to save the reporter. [CLICK] Wait. Am I terrible person?

It’s rare that games provoke that kind of calculus. And it’s very rare that they are constructed in a way that forces you to think about not just the decisions you make but why you make them. By the end of the game, as a mysterious stranger interrogates you about every major decision you’ve made over the last ten or so hours of gameplay, it’s hard not to notice that what you’ve just been playing is a length examination not just of what it means to survive, but of yourself.

(This is part one of a two-part essay on recent advances in video game storytelling. Part two will run soon)

CORRECTION: I’ve been a little remiss in apportioning credit in the above. The idea of infectionless zombies dates back to Romero and, of course, The Walking Dead was co-created by artist Terry Moore and, after its first few issues, has been co-created by artist Charlie Adlard. Apologies to the relevant parties.

[1] Oddly, both games have been criticized for still being too “game-like.” This strikes me as wrongheaded, akin to arguing that a graphic novel, by including panels and images, wasn’t enough like a prose book. Or that book, by being made out of words, wasn’t enough like a television show. If we want the medium of games to improve, it shouldn’t be via them becoming very long movies.

[2] Please take the fact that I used as clunky a phrase as “narrative experiences” in this sentence as a sign of the newness of taking narrative in video games seriously and the difficulty in discussing same.

[3] You put a hammer through her head. But at least it’s justified by the world.

[4] This was even more true when the game was initially released in a serialized 5 episode format. A choice you make in Episode 2 might not pay off until Episode 5, thus making a walkthrough of your choices totally useless.

[5] Or should I say Lee? This gets me to a side point that I don’t have much time to get into here: The relationship between choice mechanics and attachment to games. There is something about having a say in the way a game progresses that creates in most gamers I know a greater sense of emotional attachment to the events as they unfold. I think on some level we come to care for our characters (and the characters around them) as if they were our charges. We don’t want bad things to happen to them, and have at least some ability to keep them out of trouble. When we fail, it’s heartbreaking. And I feel silly about owning up to the fact that it’s heartbreaking, because, after all, this is a fucking video game we are talking about here people. It’s probably—outside of hardcore pornography—the medium with the most uneven ratio of profit to respectability there is.

[6] In the world of The Walking Dead, all dead people become zombies. Zombie bites spread a poison that helps speed the process of death along. The only way to stop this process is to have whoever is with you—likely a loved one or friend—kill you by shooting you in the head or otherwise destroying your brain.

Stay-at-Home Dad vs. Muslim Zombies

Posted on July 5, 2013 by Chris Gavaler

According to World War Z, two things can trigger a zombie apocalypse: 1) stay-at-home dads, and 2) kindness to Muslims. It is nice, however, to see an American blockbuster starring Brad Pitt as that most un-American of creatures, a U.N. Investigator.

My book club recently spun off a zombie club of college professors, two in Economics and one in English, me (a Philosopher may be joining us soon too). I presented a conference paper on The Walking Dead last winter, but my knowledge base is dwarfed by the guy who makes guac on movie nights. So far we’ve only watched The Night of the Living Dead. We’d schedule Dawn of the Dead (the remake for some reason), but postponed when a wife (also an Economics professor) got called to Abu Dhabi on a family emergency.

George Romero, director zero in the genre contagion, gave his ghouls a clear cause: radiation from a returning Venus space probe. Brad spends most of WWZ’s 116 minutes and $190 million dollars searching for clues. Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman doesn’t care. But in terms of theme and discourse, the answer is always scene one.

Every zombie story (and, arguably, every story of every genre) begins with something rotten in the state of Denmark. It takes less than ten minutes (including the insufferably slow credits sequence) for that creepy old man to lurch at Barbra in the cemetery, but Night of the Living Dead has already provided a horde of apocalypse-triggering conflicts spawning across issues of religion, nation, capitalism, and family:

Johnnie’s stopped going to church and jokes about being damned. Romero shoots the American flag flapping backwards from a veteran’s grave. Is the exploitive funeral industry stealing the wreath off the grave and selling it back to them every year? The family unit is shattered in multiple directions: parents vs. children, brother vs. sister, grandparent vs. grandson. The kids discuss digging up the only vaguely remembered dad so they don’t have to drive hours out of town on their mother’s orders. Time itself is upturned. The first line of the film is a complaint about daylight savings.

World War Z is simpler. The pre-zombie preamble is an ode to the domesticated male. Brad Pitt is the perfect stay-at-home dad. His blissfully happy daughters joke that all he does since quitting his job is make breakfast, but his pancakes are better than Michael Keaton’s in Mr. Mom. Brad doesn’t mind scolding everyone to put their dishes in the sink, but in thematic terms, this is an apocalyptic inversion of stability. His bread-winning wife doesn’t even help with the plates.

When things heat up during the morning commute (Brad is chauffeuring everyone to school and work), his wife takes the wheel while he assumes the traditionally maternal duty of calming and comforting the asthmatically panicked daughter. If you were hoping for a 21^st century vision of shared gender roles, the formal plot doesn’t start till the wife is safely tucked away with the children. Her only job now is being a mom. Dad, meanwhile, reveals the secret depth of his professional prowess, including the power to call rescue helicopters down from the sky. In fact, he may be the only man left with a shot at saving the world. Sure, he only takes the job to safeguard his family, but at that moment the world has already been righted. Zombie plague restores domestic order.

Kirkman plays a similar game in Walking Dead. The comic book is a paean to traditional gender—though kudos to the TV team for trying to shake that up a bit. The zombie ur-heroine Barbra is significantly worse, a knock-off of Hitchcock’s Melanie in The Birds. When the going gets tough, the gals collapse into semi-catatonic dementia. Fortunately, Barbra retreats to a farmhouse first, which Ben (he wasn’t black until Duane Jones showed up for the casting call) boards up. This is where economic theory comes in. How do external threats alter group behavior? Which is the more profitable strategy: staying mobile or hunkering down?

World War Z is explicit about both. Director Marc Forster literally spells it out in subtitles: “Movement is life.” Not that those very nice but ultimately very stupid Spanish parents listen to Brad. And look who gets eaten in the next scene. Meanwhile, Israel boards up their whole country. But they also let in Muslim refugees, figuring a grateful live Muslim is better than an angry dead Muslim. Cooperation skyrockets as Israeli soldiers nod and smile and even hand over the PA system for group singing. I’ve never seen an airport customs line half as chummy.

But as every zombie fan knows, hunkering never works for long. Images of Middle East peace last two, maybe three minutes. Romero boarded up the Monroeville Mall (about two miles from my childhood home) for his first sequel, Dawn of the Dead, but its collapse is nothing to the geysers of Palestinian zombies flooding into the last nation on Earth. CGI turns Romero’s lurching latex-painted extras into blood cells gushing through urban arteries. Israel dies from its own kindness—a political allegory a lot of right wingers can probably live with.

That’s where Romero would have left things, with Brad ascending from the Tel Aviv airport into the ambiguous but not particularly hopeful unknown. WWZ is a 1950s scifi. When Don Siegel tried to end Invasion of the Body Snatchers with a chillingly open-ended “They’re coming!”Hollywood sent him back to the editing booth to tack on their contractual, world-is-saved last scene. Forster uses the same one. It turns out zombies dissolve in water! Or something like that. Which is also why at its surprisingly non-gory heart, WWZ isn’t a zombie movie.

Yes, these zombies are sprinters. And, no, they don’t eat the flesh off our bones—just a quick nibble and it’s welcome to the team. But their real genre faux paus is their willingness to bow to the deus ex machina of the human spirit. That’s the formula and American self-image Romero so thoroughly gutted in 1968. In Night of the Living Dead, the center doesn’t hold. Daughter eats mother, brother eats sister, and a posse of deputized rednecks gun down the last rugged individual. In fact, there never was a center. Government, family, God, those are just boards we nail around ourselves while waiting for oblivion to splinter through.

Not true of WWZ. Sure, the American experiment fails (our cops are just more lawless looters), but the world government holds. Instead of retreating to upstate Maine to wait out the vampire plague of I Am Legend (Romero’s literary influence), Brad’s patriarchal family reunites in Nova Scotia. Yeah, that’s right. Canada and the U.N. save humanity. Talk about a horror story!

The Hooded Utilitarian

a pundit in every panopticon

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Stay-at-Home Dad vs. Muslim Zombies