As many know, AMC’s The Waking Dead is based on Robert Kirkman’s long-running comic book series of the same name. But the show’s writers have put in a lot of work to keep the series’ storyline separate enough from the comic’s events so that regular readers can still be caught by surprise every once in a while.
Here now is a look at some plot points from Kirkman’s comic that have yet to appear in the show in honor of tonight’s premiere of Fear The Walking Dead, which will, of course, spring completely anew into the world of walkers without any comic guidance.
One last note before we get started. There will be spoilers from the comics and the early seasons of the show, so avert your eyes if you’re not caught up.
Bye bye, Baby Judith
A nagging question that many viewers of The Walking Dead have had for a while is how is it even possible to raise a baby in a post-apocalyptic world full of zombies? Especially when you’re mostly on the road? Walkers are known to travel miles just because they heard a noise in the distance. And babies are known to make noise at the worst possible moments; it’s in their nature. It just doesn’t add up.
Well, unfortunately, Judith didn’t live nearly this long in the comic book series. Remember when the Governor took over the prison? Well, in the comic, that’s when Lori and Judith both died. Lori got blown up and her body crushed Judith to death. Pretty grim, eh? The show would’ve taken a serious turn into another direction of they included this. With her hanging around, we still have some hope for the future of humanity.
All That’s Left Of Rick Grimes
Rick Grimes is a badass. There’s absolutely no denying that. He’s gone on full rampages and killed dozens of walkers with an ax, and even told someone how he was going to kill them before he actually followed through. But the Rick Grimes from the television series still has a lot of work to do if he wants to be viewed as being as much of a badass as his comic book counterpart.
Early on in The Walking Dead comic book run, Rick Grimes comes across a town called Woodbury and meets their leader, the self-titled “Governor.” How’d the Governor respond? By cutting off Rick’s right hand. So think of all of the best things Rick’s done on the show. Now imagine him doing them with only his lucky lefty.
Love Everywhere You Look
The Walking Dead isn’t a television drama with random romances at every turn. While there have been occasional hints, we’ve only seen a handful of couples actually develop relationships on screen into something we’ve come to appreciate – the most notable being Glenn and Maggie.
That’s not the case in the comic book, though. We’ve seen couples link up that we could never see on the show. Such as Carol and Tyreese, Michonne and Tyreese, and Rick and Andrea. To be fair, a lot of these people didn’t live long enough to make a romantic connection in the first place. But the show’s pace could’ve been seriously bogged down if they tried to fit in all of this romance.
Carol Who?
If you were to put the Walking Dead characters into a NCAA tournament-style bracket of fan favorites, the number one seeds would probably be Rick, Daryl, Michonne and Glenn. But the Cinderella story that no one expected to make a deep run in the beginning would have to be Carol. She started out the series much like her comic book counterpart, reserved, vulnerable, and in need of support. But that’s where the similarities stopped.
While the Carol we saw on screen went on to become rather deadly and strong-willed after the loss of her daughter, the same can’t be said for her character in the book. That version of Carol ended up in the arms of Tyreese while seeking safety from the world and went completely off the deep end when he cheated on her with Michonne. As a result, she sacrificed herself to a walker in a horrific display of mental instability, leaving her daughter behind. This may have actually made for great drama on television, but then we would have missed out on all of Carol’s epicness and cookies.
Tyreese Shows His Fatherly Side
Tyreese is probably the character whose on-screen adaptation is the furthest from the original. A large criticism of the character on the show was that he was too much of a gentle giant, although he was noticeably stronger than almost everyone they encountered. The same may have been the case for the comic book version if it weren’t for the fact that he had a daughter named Julie. The sad news is that she only lived for about seven issues.
Unbeknownst to Tyreese, Julie and her boyfriend Chris made a death pact with each other and planned to shoot each other at the same time so they could die together. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned and Tyreese went into a dark, dark place. Sure, he killed an insane amount of walkers (and Julie’s boyfriend, over and over) as a result, but it was still pretty hard to see.
