A slow moving shuffle of what we assume is shoes. Rick picks up on the sound at the same time as we do and investigates. Then he spots a little girl in a dressing gown and fluffy slippers he calls then and says the immortal line “don’t be afraid”….

At this point the girl turns and we get to see fear in the eyes Rick instead. His realisation that this young child is a zombie seems to affect him and that’s why I love this scene. The realisation that he is going to have to take on this girl seemingly hit him in hard in the few seconds of calm he has before she starts moving towards him. 

The creators of the show could have gone any way they wanted to with the zombie a man, a woman or a boy but a little blonde girl seemed to me a statement of intent. It meant no one is safe. How often have we seen children get shot on television in a brutal fashion? I’m not sure I have ever seen such a brutal execution of a child in any form of visual entertainment ever. The sound of the gun shot echoes in the surrounding environment and the bullet hit is shown in slow motion along with the blood splatter. As the body falls you finally get a brief soundtrack and the title scene kicks in. This is a bar setting scene if there ever was one.

Admittedly the girl is a zombie but the feeling of revulsion still remains as we are yet to find out what it means in this universe to be a zombie. She was a young girl and our feelings about child killers is something ingrained in to most people from a young age. I’m not sure however though if anyone would blame Rick for his choice as it was more about survival then about violence towards a child. For the life of me I can not even think about how many zombies I have seen killed in this show but this is the kill that I remember (and one other from Season 2). Maybe it's because I'm a father? or it could be the first kill always sticks with you? but I can not remember the death of an extra that has been so strong in any other show.

The whole opening was perfectly pitched and made more of an impact on me then any other TV show or version of The Walking Dead. The stellar opening means the rest of The Walking Dead has a lot to live up to. The question is can it? We will endeavour to find out as our shuffle around Kirkman's universe continues.

Whether your passion is Gaming, TV or Comics or a combination of these you can have helped but hear the name The Walking Dead. Robert Kirkman's along with Tony Moore (who was the original artist but he was replaced by Charlie Adlard at the 7th issue) creation has gone from strength to strength since initial comic release in 2003. Spawning books a TV show and now a hugely successful game franchise (along with a not so successful game but lets keep quiet about Survival Instinct).

I'm a fan of the three areas mostly thanks to the way they interweave with each other. Each can be appreciated on its own merits but as a whole they give a great insight into the post Zombie Apocalypse world. The varied characters are multi dimensional each with their own back story  and inner demons. This helps the narrative to flow and make something interesting come out of nearly every issue or episode. 

This kind of media is growing and thanks to the efforts of Telltale, Skybound (along with Image) and AMC it looks like the Walking Dead is destined to grow even stronger as time goes on.

We have a cunning plan in how we want to cover this type of media which we will be sharing more of in the coming weeks. So for now I leave you with this common question; who actually cuts the grass?