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This is either a zombie renaissance, or a comic book renaissance for TV, as The Walking Dead has officially been greenlit for a second season or a whole 13 episodes after record ratings. As the President of AMC put it:

“No other cable series has ever attracted as many Adults 18-49 as ‘The Walking Dead.

Congrats once again to Robert Kirkman and company. PR below.

AMC announced today the renewal of “The Walking Dead” for a 13-episode second season. Since debuting Sunday, October 31, “The Walking Dead” has broken ratings records, with the series reaching more Adults 18-49 than any other show in the history of cable television.

Today’s announcement also includes Fox International Channels’ (FIC) global renewal for a second season, following record-breaking premiere ratings in 120 countries in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.  “The Walking Dead” was the highest-rated original series premiere ever to air on FIC simultaneously worldwide.

“The ‘Dead’ has spread!” said Charlie Collier, President, AMC.  “No other cable series has ever attracted as many Adults 18-49 as ‘The Walking Dead.’  This reaffirms viewers’ hunger for premium television on basic cable.  We are so proud to be bringing back ‘The Walking Dead’ again, across the globe.”

 Ratings Highlights for The Walking Dead – Episode 2, which premiered  on AMC Sunday, 11/7:
•  10pm airing – 3.1 HH rating with over 4.7 million viewers;
• Adults 18-49 – 3.3 million viewers;
• Adults 25-54 – 2.8 million viewers;
• Men 18-49 – 2.1 million viewers.
Ratings Highlights for the The Walking Dead – Episode 1, which premiered on AMC Sunday, 10/31:
• 10pm airing – 3.7 HH rating with over 5.3 million total viewers;
• Adults 18-49 – 3.6 million viewers;
• Adults 25-54 – 3.1 million viewers;
• Men 18-49 - 2.0 million viewers.

“I wish all programming decisions were no brainers like this one,” said Sharon Tal Yguado, SVP Scripted Programming. “‘The Walking Dead’ is a TV masterpiece on so many levels. We want at least 10 seasons, if not more. Kudos to AMC!”

AMC’s “The Walking Dead” is based on the comic book series written by Robert Kirkman and published by Image Comics.  Kirkman serves as an executive producer on the project and three-time Academy Award-nominee Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) serves as writer, director and executive producer. Gale Anne Hurd (The Terminator, Aliens, Armageddon, The Incredible Hulk), chairman of Valhalla Motion Pictures, serves as Executive Producer. David Alpert from Circle of Confusion and Charles “Chic” Eglee (Dexter, The Shield, Dark Angel) serve as Executive Producers.

 “The Walking Dead” tells the story of the months and years that follow after a zombie apocalypse. It follows a group of survivors, led by police officer Rick Grimes, who travel in search of a safe and secure home.  The comic goes on to explore the challenges of life in a world overrun by zombies who take a toll on the survivors, and sometimes the interpersonal conflicts present a greater danger to their continuing survival than the zombies that roam the country.  Over time, the characters are changed by the constant exposure to death and some grow willing to do anything to survive.

Shot on location in Atlanta, “The Walking Dead” is led by a cast that includes Lincoln (“Teachers,” Love Actually)

4 Comments on The Walking Dead shambles to another season, setting ratings records, last added: 11/9/2010

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maggie said, on 11/8/2010 3:56:00 PM

YAY!

moubius44 said, on 11/8/2010 8:23:00 PM

Whoohoe bring on the collection boxes ……… na, it’s good news all right, finally a good dead show on telly

Micah said, on 11/9/2010 3:07:00 PM

10+ Seasons! 30 Helens agree!

Matt said, on 11/9/2010 3:47:00 PM

Kudos, but you gotta read this Wash. Post article on spinning ratings.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/08/AR2010110806145.html

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The Walking Dead premiere last night was the highest rated cable series premiere of 2010, and its highest rating EVER on AMC for an original series, Deadline reports. The premiere drew 5.3 million total viewers, and the second showing increased the total audience to 8.1 million. “It’s a good day to be dead,” said AMC president Charlie Collier “We are so proud of this series, its depth of storytelling and the remarkable talent attached.”

AMC heavily promoted the show, and the nerd-related internet played right along with a barrage of promo. Reviews have been generally very, very positive.

This first season of The Walking Dead is only six episodes long, making it really more of a miniseries. However, a contest to be a zombie during the show pretty much gave away that a second season is planned, hopefully one that is a little longer.

As for the folks at Stately Beat Manor, we watched and greatly enjoyed the show, finding the tone highly reminiscent of Darabont’s polarizing The Mist. (The scene with the dad and zombie wife in particular.) The biggest complaint about it is the slow pacing but the franchise is really all about survival and character — let it unfold so we care.

If we can get a little analytical for a moment, the appeal of both The Walking Dead and Y: The Last Man have always seemed very similar: strongly written stories about the nitty gritty of post-apocalyptic survival through highly relatable characters. Both comics feature low-key art that emphasizes storytelling and character. Both have been huge hits in collected form. Y has been rumored for a movie for a long time, but for many of the same reasons that TWD is a potentially great TV series, Y would also be much better as a TV series than a movie…the fact that TWD is so similar may mean that we will never see a Y movie or series, we’d guess.

One final note: it was recently pointed out that the WALKING DEAD books have over three million copies in print. That is an amazing number. (For some perspective, the Stieg Larsson books, the biggest phenomenon in publishing since Harry Potter, have sold 15 million copies in English.) This is a hugely popular multimedia franchise that looks to have real legs. Congratulations to Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard for achieving this and also doing it on terms that favor the creator. It’s a good day for creator-owned comics.

by Shannon O’Leary

So, does The Walking Dead (premiering this Sunday, Halloween, on AMC at 10:00/9 PM C) live up to the hype?

One Word Answer:  Ewwwwwwwwww!

Gross (Photo courtesy of AMC)

It’s definitely the grossest basic cable show of all time and possibly the grossest TV show ever. Seriously, even the gorier episodes of True Blood or Keeping up with the Kardashians don’t come close.  Definitely don’t plan on handling meat of any kind after watching it. 

Is it groundbreaking and amazing? Only in the sense that you can’t believe something that gnarly is on TV. The storytelling is very good and the style and pace of the first two episodes are great. The show was either shot with a warped lens or something was done in post-production to create an unsettling, claustrophobic 3D space for the viewer. There’s not a wasted minute in either the first or second episodes.  Both move quickly and maintain suspense for their entire running times. Series Writer, Director, and Executive Producer, Frank Darabont left nothing to chance and it shows. His teleplay is tight and the production is meticulous yet epic in scale.

Rick checks out of the undead hopsital (Photo: Courtesy of AMC)

But where The Walking Dead really succeeds is in how well it realizes the source material while reinventing it. There are new survivors who don’t seem tacked on and whole new scenarios for old familiar survivors that are tweaked just enough to be different without straying too far from the original template. The Walking Dead has always been a typical zombie set up but it’s never been a typical zombie story. Just like in Kirkman’s comics, there are significant stretches where the survivors don’t interact with (or even say the word) zombies. The real investment for readers of the comic has always been seeing how the characters adapt in the face of zombie adversity and the TV incarnation seems to be setting viewers up for the same kind of payoff.

I’m cracked out crazy about AMC’s other dark, more character driven dramas, Breaking Bad and Mad Men, but I didn’t realize I wanted to see some decent, unassuming TV folks faced with making indecent, inhuman choices until I saw The Walking Dead. This is a dark, plot driven story that pummels its characters mercilessly as opposed to a dark, character driven plot where the characters pummel themselves and everyone around them. These are uncomplicated characters who, prior to the Zombiepocalypse, were living simple lives. And right now, putting straightforward, salt of the earth types in a bad, total gross out situation is a TV twist that will still appeal to the current zeitgeist’s taste for the distasteful. People might cringe with self-recognition and secretly want to be like antiheroes Don Dr

It’s Halloween Week AND Walking Dead Week and this if freaking radical: special limited edition artwork by four indie art stars, available at Secret Headquarters in LA.

The four prints were designed by Jordan Crane and hand-printed by Jordan Rae; each was illustrated by a different accomplished artist (Lisa Hanawalt, Jon Vermilyea, Johnny Ryan and Jordan Crane). Inspired by shooting range targets, the prints pay homage to the acclaimed comic series. Available individually or as a set of four, the archival-quality prints measure 23 x 35 inches on acid-free 70lb. paper. Each print is limited to a run of 100 copies and will be signed by both the artist and Kirkman; single prints are $40 and the set of four is $150.
 
Dave Pifer, owner of The Secret Headquarters, says “We’re big fans of The Walking Dead comics, and we’re thrilled to be able to mix it up with the varied style of these rad artists.”
 
Robert Kirkman, creator and writer of The Walking Dead, says “I’m astounded by the talent involved and couldn’t be happier with how this turned out. I think people are going to love these prints and I hope it brings people into The Secret Headquarters in droves because it’s a great store.”

Lisa Hanawalt

Johnny Ryan

Jon Vermilyea

The premiere for The Walking Dead tv show was thrown last night and the after party was held at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and it sounds frigging awesome:

The party was pretty phenomenal. They were serving Zombies (the alcoholic kind, not the dead kind), and they had some of the show set pieces outside as decoration. There were also a number of zombies roaming around on the walk up to the party. There’s nothing quite walking through a dark cemetery with a near full moon, a strong breeze and copious amounts of the undead shambling their way towards you.

There were also AMC sponsored Zombie walks across the US WORLD yesterday morning, and a lot of photos are going up, here are some on Facebook. We especially like the one of the undead and the Eternal City.

Just as a reminder, The Walking Dead TV show premieres on AMC on Halloween, Sunday, October 31 at 10 p.m. ET/9 p.m.

At any publishing convention, the gigantic sponsor banners hung in the rafters provide a glimpse at coming trends and stories people will be talking about this year. We’ve put together a collection of the biggest banners at New York Comic Con today.

Embedded above, Disney’s Tron remake had a humungous banner supporting the Tron book, Betrayal—hanging directly over the convention floor entrance. See more banners below. Check out our New York Comic Con tag for more coverage.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Too early for Halloween plans? Not really. The Walking Dead TV show debuts on Halloween at 10 PM ET with a 90-minute opening episode. Based on Robert Kirkman’s comics, the show follows the adventures of the survivors of a zombiepocalypse, and stars Andrew Lincoln, Jon Bernthal, Shane Walsh, and Sarah Wayne Callies. The four-and-a-half minute trailer previously seen at Comic-Con was also released, and we would absolutely set our DVR for this while we were out trick or treating!

More acclaim for The Walking Dead: "Gerald Seymour's latest novel, The Walking Dead, is reminiscent of a patchwork quilt. At first, you start with many dissimilar items arrayed before you, with no idea how these unrelated bits can possibly be sewn together into a final product. Eventually, however, after much time and effort and connecting this piece to that, you end up with a gratifying result. The "pieces" in The Walking Dead are the array of seemingly unrelated characters and plot lines that Seymour ultimately crafts into a satisfying thriller. . . What makes this novel noteworthy is Seymour's attention to the book's underlying themes. He delves into the question of how young men get into situations where they willingly risk their lives for their ideals, drawing parallels between the suicide bomber and a young volunteer fighting in the Spanish Civil War seventy years earlier. Other sub-texts explored are the efficacy of intelligence gathering and old-fashioned detective work, and the roles chance and coincidence play in events.The book is well paced, starting slowly and gradually picking up speed before barreling through to the end and some of the plot twists are truly shocking. Readers are advised to have a contiguous block of time available for the last third of the novel; once started, it's difficult to put down." - BookBrowse.com

Nothing better for Dad on Father's Day than a great book, and The Winged Elephant has a few suggestions for weekend shoppers. For the outdoorsman, How to Fish by Chris Yates. For the history buff, The Plot Against Pepys and The Imperial Capitals of China. For the inquisitive, philosophical Dad, we recommend The Secret History of the World. And for all those Dad's just looking for a little quiet time with a great novel, we recommend Gerald Seymour's The Walking Dead and Warren Adler's Funny Boys, both page-turners, hot off the press.

Master thriller writer Gerald Seymour is back with a new tale of heart-stopping international suspense: "The Walking Dead is compulsively readable but also highly complex and, perhaps, overly contrived. Like the vest filled with explosives and a detonator, the book has many threads. Several seem to have little to do with the plot, but, curiously, those threads are among the most compelling. One concerns the diary of a British volunteer in the Spanish civil war, and Seymour uses it to ruminate on whether one man’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist. Timely, topical, and gripping.”— Booklist

Gerald Seymour's new thriller Walking Dead has been given a starred review in Kirkus: "Gerald Seymour (Rat Run, Traitor's Kiss, etc.), a genuine master of the modern thriller, brings together old-line British spies, a brilliant war-maimed American spook, a couple of classic crooks, a bankrupt professor, the literary ghost of a doomed idealist in the Spanish Civil War, a cell of disaffected young British Muslims, a brave but alienated copper and a half-English-half-Arab villain with a hatred for the West. Heroics, religion, sex, torture, doubt and ever-increasing tension in a cerebral blend. A thriller for all sides of today's war."

2008 is the Year of the Rat, and what better way to start the new year than with Gerald Seymour's Rat Run, a terrific political thriller from one of the best espionage writers in the world. Seymour has a brand new novel, Walking Dead, coming from Overlook this summer. To celebrate Chinese New Year, we're offering a free copy of Rat Run and an advance reading copy of Walking Dead to one lucky person. To enter the drawing, send us an email with "Rat Run" in the subject line to: [email protected].

I’ve shown you my sad set of MLK’s Library photos from when I went to DC. My friend Mary Early has found an older, niftier looking set of photos of the same library back when it was new and lovely and full of hope and promise. I wish the Save DC Libraries site looked like it was still alive. The DC Friends site is still kicking, albeit with bad news and the DC Public Library Foundation looks like they spent all their money on web design. Meanwhile DC Public hires teens to shelve books and answer phones which seems like a real good news/bad news situation in a library dealing with massive underfunding and understaffing.

I was in Seattle over the weekend. Sorry I didn’t call you. I went to a wedding and then got a terrible cold and spent the last day and a half on my friend’s couch reading comic books until flying home on a red eye the day before yesterday. I am recovered now, mostly. The one thing on my to do list was to see the new library. When I left Seattle four years ago, it was just a hole in the ground and a loose frame but not yet open to the public. I had really liked the old library — though understood why it needed updating — and I even liked the temporary library. I can’t say the same for the new library.

Now, there are many great things about the new library. I connected to the wifi/internet no problem. All the people I asked for advice and directions were super friendly and helpful. I liked having the option to get a cup of coffee and have a dozen interesting places to hang out with it. The place is fun to look at and explore. I enjoyed getting to pore through bound volumes of old periodicals that were right there on the shelves. The online catalog has finally improved to the point where it’s easy to use and makes a fair amount of sense; at SPL in particular that was not always true.

However, I saw a real disconnect beween the lovely outside and grand entry spaces to the library, plus a few other very design-y areas, and the rest of the building. Materials were hard to find. VERY hard to find. Signage was abysmal, often just laserprinted pieces of paper, sometimes laminated and sometimes not. Doors to areas that may have been public were forbidding and unwelcoming. There weren’t enough elevators. There weren’t enough bathrooms. There wasn’t a comfortable place to sit in the entire building. There were lots of “dead spaces” that, because of architecture, couldn’t really be used for anything and they were collecting dust. The lighting was bad. Stack areas were dim and narrow. The teen area seemed like an afterthought. Bizarre display areas with a table and some books on it were in the middle of vast open areas. Most of the place felt like it was too big and then the stacks felt too crowded and I had to climb around people working to find things. Shelvers shut down the entire “spiral” concept with booktrucks. The writer’s area in this library is a shadow of the glorious writers room in the old downtown building where I had a desk briefly.

Did I think it was going to be different? Maybe a little. I left Seattle specifically because its idea of progress and mine were fundamentally at odds and I didn’t enjoy the destabilizing effect of a city always under construction and didn’t get enough from the things that were eventually constructed. This library looks like it was built for a bookless future where we get all of our information from the internet and the digital realm. For now, we’ll just keep the books on hand because people will bitch if they don’t get to read them, but they’re no longer the reason for the library, and they’re no longer honored and appreciated as the things we love and build libraries to house.

My small photoset of the Seattle Public Library is here.

update: I was pointed to a PUBLIB posting by a librarian who was at SPL quite recently who makes many of the same points that I do in different ways.

Michael blogged about this last week I figured I’d add some more information. These are two students of mine that I visit irregularly at the Tunbridge Public Library. They’ve got pretty good computers and sharp minds but don’t know the first thing about how to navigate a file system or compose a message to save for later. We sit down and talk about how to do the things they want to do. The last time I was there, I made a little video and you can see it on YouTube.

I feel like I can just say “blah blah insert digital divide lecture here” but really, the library is doing an invaluable service here, and the job I have isn’t even paid for by the library. I’m an employee of a local technical high school that happens to take its outreach mandate very seriously and sends me to these places that happen to be libraries. If I had any tips for people wanting to do this same sort of thing, here they are.

1. Encourage people to get laptops. I’m not a real Dell fanatic, personally, but because of them laptops aren’t as fiendishly expensive as they used to be. I really liked that my students were both using Macs because a) it’s the same kind of computer that I have and b) I find them much easier to use for someone who has never used a computer before. No need to start a flame war, but I’ve been doing this for several years and I’ve observed that my Mac students are happier with their computers. You can save people serious money if they have a laptop and they can use the library’s internet service occasionally and not have to pay to get broadband at home.
2. Invest in wifi. If students have their own computers then you can teach them about the internet using their own computers. No matter how awesome our public access computers are, they’re not identical to the computers our patrons have at home, they’re just not. Students can learn things on the computers and then take them home and practice the exact same things.
3. Solve problems. I used to teach a basic email class at the public library I worked at. It went great. However I would find that time and time again people would come to the class and sit through it because they had one loosely email-related question to ask. They didn’t even need an email class but there was no other way to get five minutes of dedicated staff time to ask a computer question. Consider being available in a way so that people who want a class get a class and people who just have questions can ask them. Also stress that they should come in with a problem to be solved, not just “I want to learn about computers” People who just want to learn about computers should probably go to a class.
4. Larger groups help everyone learn. My two students got along great and it was excellent to have them learn from and teach each other as well as learn from me. Having multiple students (not a ton, maybe just two or three) encourages people to see tech support time as a limited resource, lets people see other people’s computers and their problems in a larger context, and makes computer time more sociable and less like school. Also I think people are less likely to let their technostress get the best of them if they are not in a private session with you.
5. Keep it regular and keep it brief. Have set times when you offer tech support help. This keeps people queueing their questions to bring to you, can free up other less-savvy staff to refer people to you appropriately and the time limit means people will ask pressing questions first and prioritize their own concerns.
6. Share with staff, create a FAQ. If I solve a problem that I see frequently (for example: how do I print just part of a web page) I’ll often share the solution with the staff so that they can know how to help people who come in with the same problem.
7. Know when to say when. Unfortunately, the biggest problem in my area is that people need help at home, figuring out their printer, or their network or their desktop machine. I decided early on that going to people’s houses would not be part of my job. There has been a rare case where a patron got DSL and wasn’t sure how to do the self-install and I’ve traded help for a free dinner or something. Usually I’ll refer people to the professionals when they need help either buying equipment, installing something at home, or fixing a complicated problem with some legacy frankenstein PC. It’s too easy to own all of people’s future problems if you get too involved with some of these situations and I’ve sometimes had to tell people that I won’t be able to keep working with them unless they get a more stable computer or start practicing better computer hygeine.

Those are just some top-of-the-head ideas. My library background doesn’t make me special in this regard. Anyone who is okay dealing with people and knows technical stuff well could be part of an informal tech support program at your library.