The Walking Dead - Vol 3: Safety Behind Bars

I wasn't kidding when I said that I was going to blast threw these. Ephraim took a long nap so I was able to cozy up with this. I realize now looking back as some previous reviews I've done that I do a really bad job of telling people what I'm watching/reading it about. So I apologize for that. For those who doing know The Walking Dead is a zombie comic. I think Zombies are a great subject matter. For me they represent the idea of society as a whole, and the zombie represents the uneducated portions of society - and I mean uneducated in the worst possible sense - people that refuse to learn about how to make themselves and the planet a better place, people who are more than happy to live in ignorant bliss than make themselves and the world a better place. And those people, on their own, aren't all that harmful - but when you get them as a group, and the group starts to grow it can destroy an entire society. That to me is at the heart of Zombie stories.
So this series is about a group of survivors of, whatever it is that caused all of this, and the group is lead by policeman Rick Grimes who is surrounded by a rotating cast - people come and go quickly here, which is nice because it really does give you the sense that anything can happen. Anyone can die. This volume finds the group discovering a prison and seeing if they can make a go of starting a new life there. This series is pretty emotionally graphic. There's violence and gore - sure - it's a horror comic, but what's really effective is more about how harsh some of the stuff is that happens. Part of the problem with that is, like the characters in the comic, we the readers start to get a little desensitized to it.
One of the criticisms of this series I've read is that the characters and their relationships start to veer into the territory of soap operas. That hasn't quite happened yet but I could easily see how it might. So far so good. Excited to keep moving forward. So far there are twelve in print, and if I'm correct I actually think that there is a new one out very soon, maybe even this week. Huzzah!
If you like comics, you like zombies, this is a no brainer. Get this series.