For this entry I decided to read The Walking Dead, based on the popular AMC television series. I started at volume 2 by the way since I've seen the beginning of the television show and did not want to compare the two of them.
Humanity's descent into destruction plays a key role in The Walking Dead. Towards the end, one of the characters talks about how he wonders about the lives of each of them before they became zombies. The survivor's struggle with accepting the world as it now exists is one of the things that drives their interactions. While there isn't a constant onslaught of zombie action, the fact that the human race is now "walking dead" looms over the characters' and the reader's minds. Just when they think they're safe for a moment, someone dies or someone starts a fight over control and it is a long cycle of chaos.
The Walking Dead follows the current trend of zombie and post apocalyptic stories that seems to have cropped up recently. A quick google search showed that there have been at least 40 zombie films released in the past 2 years, and that's just counting movies. As far as the genres listed in my last entry, I'd put The Walking Dead under paranormal and speculative fiction. Speculative fiction, as defined by the source linked here, is "an umbrella term covering everything from science fiction and fantasy to magical realism." This is a pretty broad term. Interestingly, the wikipedia page for the comic lists it as "post-apocalyptic" and "zombies in comics" which doesn't really seem like a genre at all. Also of interest is the fact that, on the cover of the volume, it calls itself "a story of survival horror." Upon researching the term "survival horror," I found that is is almost only applied to video games.
I have a little experience playing survival horror games, particularly recently. A debate I have been having with a friend becomes particularly relevant when looking at this entry and the past few: how does asian horror differ from western horror and which is more effective? Which is more effective is obviously a matter of taste. However there are a couple prominent differences that have cropped up in both mediums. In The Walking Dead, the scares focus a lot on surprises and shock values. While asian horror is the same such as in The Drifting Classroom, Hideout and Uzumaki, these are more of a creepy nature or focus on body horror rather than gore and jumps as The Walking Dead did. The television show takes some of these routes but it seems the comic does not. It is highly action packed and even borderlines on being more of a drama than a horror in my opinion. There are very few moments where I actually felt scared because of the zombies and many more moments where I felt scared because of the interactions between characters. I actually question whether or not this can be considered horror or might be closer to suspense and drama.
Regardless, the parallels drawn between games and comics can be seen if we compare The Walking Dead to a game like Dead Space. Dead Space is a sci-fi that sets the main character on an abandoned ship in space where the crew has been mutated into strange monsters. They must fight their way out and find a way to repair their ship so they can escape. In both, the characters have a lot of ammunition and abilities to fight the paranormal. The main characters are very in control so that there is a lot of action. There are, again, many jump scares in both. We can compare The Drifting Classroom to a game like Silent Hill. The various monsters, which I had not gotten to during my last entry, are fueled by the character's psyche in both. Every monster in Silent Hill games is a metaphor for the main character's fears or past regrets. In The Drifting Classroom, there is a monster that is said specifically to stem from on student's imagination and to get rid of that monster, they must kill the student imagining it. While there are psychological aspects of both The Walking Dead and The Drifting Classroom, both put characters in a supernatural situation and observe the reactions, Asian horror seems to delve far more into the root of what is causing the fear rather than using jumps and multitudes of monsters to create action and drama between characters.
One thing that has been very consistent throughout every reading has been the art style. Each relies heavily on high contrast images with very dark shadows. This lends a gritty appearance to the horror genre and has been near constant so far.
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