The Walking Dead Volume I: Days Gone By by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore, The Walking Dead Volume II: Miles Behind Us by Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn, The Walking Dead Volume III by Kirkman, Adlard, and Rathburn, The Walking Dead Volume IV: Heart's Desire by Kirkman, Adlard, and Rathburn. Images Comics.  Vol. I and II ©2006, Vol. III and IV ©2007 Vol. I is priced at $9.99, all other volumes priced $12.99.
  
        Zombies have been big in movies, games, and comic books the last few years, and one of the best zombie stories currently being told is in the Image comic book The Walking Dead.  The first 42 issues have been collected in seven volumes, six issues of the comic in one trade paperback.  I've so far only read the first four volumes.
        "I'm not trying to scare anyone," says Robert Kirkman  in his introduction to Volume I, but there are scary parts and most of them don't come from the zombie attacks, but from the way the living deal with the other living.
        The story starts out with Officer Rick Grimes getting shot and going into a coma due to his injury.  When he wakes up, he finds the hospital deserted and the few people he finds have been turned into zombies.
        His first instinct is to find if his wife, Lori, and his son, Carl.  He doesn't find his family, but does find Morgan Jones and his son, Duane, who are squatting at the house of one of Rick's former neighbors.  Morgan lets Rick know that the government told everybody to go to the major cities when the plague of zombies started.  So

 Rick heads to Atlanta in search of his family.
        Atlanta is filled with zombies. Rick is almost killed and would have been if not for Glenn who takes him to a campsite outside of Atlanta.
        Among the group of people are Rick's wife and son, and his former partner, Sean, on the police force.
        Rick joins the group and eventually becomes their leader.  Not long after meeting this group he convinces them that they need to get away from Atlanta as it's no longer safe.
        Rick and his small group of followers pack up their camp and start to travel across the country, looking for a safe place to call home until they can find out what is going on with the zombies.
        Along the way they met Herschel and his family.  Herschel is a veterinarian who believes that a cure can be found for the walking dead so he's been herding them into his barn and locking them up.  Keeping zombies alive (or at least still moving anyway)  turns out to be a bad idea.
        It's in Volume III: Safety Behind Bars, that Rick and his friends find a place they can call home, a prison.
        They have to clear out the zombies in the place and there's four inmates who've been trapped in the cafeteria they have to deal with.
        There's a lot that happens in these four volumes that I haven't touched on, and the single issues of the comic book are still being published.
   
  
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