In 2019 Shelfdust asked over a hundred comic book critics, podcasters, vloggers and commentators to pick their personal, subjective favourite ‘first’ comic book issues of all time. From their choices we counted down the top fifty entries, which you can find here! But we’re not leaving it there. Now the list is over and we know which comics made the list, we’ve invited critic and podcaster Matt Lune to host a weekly show right here on Shelfdust! Each week Matt will be sitting down with a different comic critic to look at every comic which charted into the top fifty, one issue at a time.

This week it’s time to wake up in a strangely empty hospital, as we look at the comic which ended up in 15th place: The Walking Dead #1 by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore!

Rick Grimes, the standard protagonist, is a police officer who gets shot in the line of duty. When he wakes up from a coma, the world is full of zombies. That’s it, that’s the comic! But that early jump in time means everything for the narrative: Rick enters the world and has to adapt to it at the same time as the reader, giving a different sense of depth to his desperate struggle for survival. It’s a strongly told yet simple story, and all the more effective for it. To take a closer look, this week Matt is rejoined by special guest Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou!

You can listen to the episode:

Come back next week….. as Matt will be talking to C.P. Hoffman about Y: The Last Man #1!

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Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou is an Eisner-winning writer, critic, vlogger (and comic book letterer) equally known as the host of his Youtube series Strip Panel Naked, as well as the creator, editor, and designer of PanelXPanel, a monthly digital comics magazine. You can find him on Twitter here!

Matt Lune is a critic and podcaster who has written for publications including PanelXPanel, The MNT and Multiversity. You can find him on Twitter here!

 

This podcast is made possible thanks to the Shelfdust Patreon page! To find out more, head to our Patreon page here!

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