Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants: Possibilist Ecologies in ...

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Bingham 38 in expressing social critique through satire. In 1793, a four panel piece titled John Bull's Progress was published by James Gillray as a precaution against Britain's advances into war (Tabachnick 8). Picturing a portly personification of the United Kingdom in the character of John Bull, we see the ravaging effects war has upon his body and family— representations who allegorical stand in for actual people. The efficacy of the work rests in its applicability. Although Gillray's audience would have called themselves subjects and those reading The Walking Dead today would most likely call themselves citizens, similar issues are still at stake. Even though Gillray's work directly responds to reality, Kirkman and the other creators of the contemporary graphic narrative The Walking Dead have drawn from their own experience to make their imaginative fantasy come to life. The Walking Dead is a strange blend of mainstream and counterculture influences. Though beginning as a serially released comic, the title is now associated with an enterprise that includes a hit network television series, several video-games, and a plethora of customized merchandise. All are lucrative offshoots of the success of the story first issued in 2003 by Image Comics. The Walking Dead was created by author Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore. Moore completed the artwork for the first seven issues * before being replaced by Charlie Adlard. New issues were originally, and are still, released on a monthly basis. However, several alternate compilations have been published as the series has gained popularity. Though there is no explicit war between nations in this modern narrative, there is an imagination of what a reality in which total war existed might look like. Mainly, what is presented to the audiences of both works is a rectification of a false belief. First a state of normalcy is outlined against an expectation of what life will be like during a period of * Moore also continued to create the cover artwork through issue #24.
Bingham 39 conflict or war. This expectation is then proven unreal through destructive transformations of body and lifestyle after the onset of conflict. Regardless of attempts to rebuild and restore some semblance of order, the communities which develop in The Walking Dead are impermanent; they are as doomed as any ancient empire whose once innumerable exploits have vanished and whose once impressive monuments are currently crumbling into decay. Understandably, there's a lot more separating these works than several centuries and their incredibly different content—I only hope to illustrate that complex issues affecting the average person have typically appeared in popularly purchased forms of art since printing became possible. At the forefront of current affairs and implicit in the narrative's imagined universe is an uncertainty about bodies besides one's own. Since September 11 th , 2001 the realization that an individual may forfeit his or her life to end the lives of others has been impossible to ignore. Undeniably influenced by this danger, the creative team who has produced The Walking Dead has turned every living person into a potential threat, capable of causing widespread killing at any moment. By forcing readers to reconsider how they view and interact with the human figure in this way, the creators have illustrated important concerns felt by American citizens after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and United 93. Though the body is not a weapon in the comic's zombie storyline per say, the elimination of consciousness when individuals become enemies transforms their bodies into a symbolic interpretation of the ominous dangers we are facing as a society today. In an interview with GQ's Alex Pappademus, writer Robert Kirkman even states, “9/11 was definitely a big part of it, just because that was something that was on everybody's minds. It was the first time that we'd ever really
Page 1 and 2: Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants:
Page 3 and 4: Bingham 3 I owe an extreme debt of
Page 5 and 6: Bingham 5 Introduction My project e
Page 7 and 8: Bingham 7 personal growth through t
Page 9 and 10: Bingham 9 beliefs. Seeing a possibl
Page 11 and 12: Bingham 11 zombie exceeds death as
Page 13 and 14: Bingham 13 the validity of singular
Page 15 and 16: Bingham 15 Chapter I: The History o
Page 17 and 18: Bingham 17 Swamp Thing. According t
Page 19 and 20: Bingham 19 instructional profession
Page 21 and 22: Bingham 21 Another artist who worke
Page 23 and 24: Bingham 23 action into panels (Cohn
Page 25 and 26: Bingham 25 sponsorship. He designed
Page 27 and 28: Bingham 27 Charles Moulton. Marston
Page 29 and 30: Bingham 29 Frederick Wertham prompt
Page 31 and 32: Bingham 31 “graphic novel” was
Page 33 and 34: Bingham 33 what is or isn't a graph
Page 35 and 36: Bingham 35 Works Cited Benton, Mike
Page 37: Bingham 37 Chapter II: Transfusion
Page 41 and 42: Bingham 41 and dismember other bodi
Page 43 and 44: Bingham 43 bodies to pieces. (Cavar
Page 45 and 46: Bingham 45 thus creating an affecti
Page 47 and 48: Bingham 47 margins. Unlike the four
Page 49 and 50: Bingham 49 implicates the role of o
Page 51 and 52: Bingham 51 demonstrates that he is
Page 53 and 54: Bingham 53 Amy (Figure 10 & 11). Th
Page 55 and 56: Bingham 55 being who has done nothi
Page 57 and 58: Bingham 57 transgressions, this ima
Page 59 and 60: Bingham 59 Returning to the full pa
Page 61 and 62: Bingham 61 order” (200). The prem
Page 63 and 64: Bingham 63 possession, selling, ste
Page 65 and 66: Bingham 65 with yourself? Not me. I
Page 67 and 68: Bingham 67 immediate proximity of t
Page 69 and 70: Bingham 69 experience, or the human
Page 71 and 72: Bingham 71 sentences Thomas to hang
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Page 75 and 76: Bingham 74 Works Cited Berger, Arth
Page 77 and 78: Bingham 76 APPENDIX A Fig. 1. Openi
Page 79 and 80: Bingham 78 Fig. 7. Fig. 8.
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Bingham 88 Fig. 27. Fig. 28.
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Fig. 38. Bingham 94
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Fig. 41. Bingham 96
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Bingham 101 Chapter III: Speaking o
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Bingham 103 preserved, yet not enti
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Bingham 105 increasingly more discu
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Bingham 107 Wrightson only drew the
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Bingham 109 by the inexorable progr
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Bingham 111 appeared. Though the tw
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Bingham 113 General Avery Carlton S
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Bingham 115 dismembered body which
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Bingham 117 sheltered from or not e
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Bingham 119 authority. This subtle,
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Bingham 121 the center of the page
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Bingham 123 affect. Apart from this
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Bingham 125 acts of fictional chara
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Bingham 127 resemblance, their comp
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Bingham 129 experience. The creator
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Bingham 131 justified. What follows
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Bingham 133 present to witness it t
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Bingham 135 If we read each charact
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Bingham 137 able to issue an urgent
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1 According to comics historian Rob
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Bingham 140 - Interview by David Ro
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