This week’s reading was somewhat unconventional, as our article was a comic book. Although I had never watched the television show, The Walking Dead in cartoon form was very interesting to read. Even within the first few sections of the book, there were various parallels to Cohen’s The Undead.
For example, in one of the scenes, the main character sees a zombie and cries the first time. In his second encounter, he pulls the trigger on the zombie, but does it reluctantly, and ends up crying once more. Just as Cohen argues that there is more to an essence of a zombie than a horrendous, diseased creature who loves eating brains, in this comic, this zombie is a reflection of a potential friend, partner, or distant relative of the protagonist.
One interesting feature of zombies that I noticed is the fact that zombies are not vicious towards each other. When Rick and Glenn go into the city to get guns, they are protected from other zombies temporarily, as they rubbed zombie residue all over themselves to recreate the smell. However, this only lasted for a
short amount of time, as the rain began to wash away the scent. When relating this to Cohen’s claim, it seems that zombies, otherwise dubbed “fears”, are not harmful to each other, but have the potential to be very deadly to humans. However, much like the way zombies did not harm Rick and Glenn when they were scented, when we learn to embrace our fears, we are capable of making ourselves immune to our weaknesses.
Sources:
http://readcomiconline.to/Comic/The-Walking-Dead/Issue-1?id=1715
https://www.gograph.com/illustration/accept-button-gg61835774.html
https://www.gograph.com/illustration/green-arrow-over-wall-means-overcome-obstacles-gg63088456.html