G33K LYFE: Comic vs. screen: The Walking Dead

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: AMC
Melissa McBride as Carol on The Walking Dead, did the unthinkable, killing Lizzie in a moment many fans of the show didn’t think would possibly happen.

Ever since its debut in 2010, AMC's The Walking Dead has drawn in millions of viewers with its grisly depictions of some truly horrifying situations, many of which have been deemed extreme for such a popular program. As graphic and disturbing as some of these events have been, they pale in comparison to the perils that befall the characters in the far less censored medium of a black and white page.

Some of these changes, such as the addition or removal of certain characters, have certainly been creatively driven, but there have been a number of situations that were heavily altered or completely removed from the program for obvious censorship reasons, leaving many comic book readers (myself included) under the impression that there were certain lines that the show would not cross.

But all that changed with “The Grove,” a recent episode of the TV series, which will certainly go down as one of the most — if not the most — shocking episode of the entire series, which led me to reflect on a couple of the other changes made to some of the more horrifying moments of the series.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

The Barn Massacre

Comic: Shortly after arriving on Hershel's farm and settling in, Rick discovers that the kindly man is keeping a large number of zombies in his barn, believing them to be sick people who could be cured, one of which was his son Shawn. Rick agrees to help his host preserve the zombies in the barn, only for them to break out, killing two of Hershel's remaining four children and leading him to put bullets into all their heads. The unexpectedness of the attack and the high body count make this one of the rare big attacks in the early run of the series.

TV: The barn sequence in the show happens for many of the same reasons — Hershel still believes that the zombies can be cured, and his son and wife are both in the barn — yet there are two key differences that serve to make this sequence more depressing, but not nearly as terrifying as the comic book sequence. The first factor is the presence of Shane, whose increasing instability leads him to bust the lock off of the barn, releasing the walkers and giving the survivors warning and time to organize before gunning them down in front of a devastated Hershel, but the second and more important factor is the last zombie out of the barn, Carol's young daughter Sophia, who had been the subject of a search that entire season. Watching her slowly stumble toward her crying mother and her shell-shocked group was the darkest moment on the show so far, and the first indication that children were not safe.

“I Didn't Hurt the Brain”:

Comic: Ben and Billy are young twin boys with their parents in the post apocalypse world, and there wasn't much else to them, at least to start. After losing both of their parents in the early days of the series, the twins were adopted by Dale and Andrea and remained mostly in the background except for one panel, an image of Ben poking at a dead cat, which planted the seeds of something off in the mind of the young boy. Those seeds sprouted into a sickening conclusion, as out of nowhere, when his adopted mother went looking for him, she came across Ben hovering over his brother's corpse, convinced that he would come back and everything would be okay. This was another dark moment in a story that had already been full of them up to that point, coming to an end when young Carl Grimes took it upon himself to discreetly execute the unstable child when no adult could bring themselves to do it.

TV: The moment that inspired the article, and one of the few moments that readers were 100 per cent sure would never be shown on screen, even more so when there was no sign of the twins' family in the program, but holy shit were we wrong. Enter Lizzie and Mika, two sisters who were understandably traumatized by the death of their father during the prison outbreak. Fleeing the prison after saving big softie Tyrese's life with two precise headshots, the duo rescued Rick's baby Judith and left, meeting up with a banished Carol later on. On the road, signs began to show that something may be up with the older sister, and events play out similar to the comics with one key difference, it was so much more horrible than how it played out in the book. In the comic they find Ben, shut him away and he is only seen again for one brief moment before his death, yet last week's episode portrayed a little girl who was grinning over the dead body of her sister and casually mentioning that she was about to do the same to the baby. Here was a girl who just didn't get it. The final scene between Lizzie and Carol was a beautifully acted, stomach-churning scene, and no fan will ever look at the flowers the same way again.