The Walking Dead Comics-to-TV Comparison: "TS-19"

The Comics: Aside from the opening and a few sordid glimpses here and there, we've never seen any flashbacks to life before Rick's awakening in the hospital.  As Cracked will tell you, there's a good reason you don't see the transition from everyday life to undead Hell in zombie movies. 

Brought To Life: Here we see the hospital mid-outbreak, as Shane attempted to liberate Rick from the hospital while avoiding military execution squads slaughtering infected doctors and patients alike.  Further lending sympathy to his AMC counterpart, Shane valiantly struggles to use what time he has to free his best friend, but ultimately mistakes him for dead and reluctantly flees.  Brutal!

Presumably, Rick awoke not too long after this sequence, given he was largely dependant on thouse now-defunct machines.  Can we expect other LOST-style flashbacks for our other heroes in the future?

The Comics: Our band of Walking Dead survivors have encountered many a haven from the undead hordes along their journey, the closest to real security being the prison stumbled upon during a desperate search for food.  But nothing gold can stay...

Brought To Life: Continuing the specifically-TV story from last week, the AMC group enters the seeming haven of the CDC (interesting that the CDC actually takes base in Atlanta, and never recieves mention in the comics), and salvation seems apparent.  Food, cots, entertainment and hot showers?  Could this be our new prison? 

Or is all not as it seems?!

The Comics: Zombie stories just wouldn't be zombie stories without encountering at least one doctor or one lunatic whose safe haven quickly becomes a nightmare, and the comic Walking Dead has seen several incarnations of both.  There was Dr. Stevens of Woodbury, studying the zombie phenomenon with his assistant Alice, or farmer Hershel Greene, whose farm quickly becomes overrun by his personal stash of zombies...

Brought To Life: We mentioned last week that while Dr. Edwin Jenner does share several characteristics with the doctors we've seen on paper, Noah Emmerich's tortured and resigned CDC worker represents a wholly original creation.  Neither he, nor his test-subject wife or the entire CDC subplot appear in the books.

The Comics: Young Carl has led a horrifically tortured childhood in the wake of the zombie apocalypse, but shows a strong moral compass as with his father.  Still, we've seen the young lad's proficiency with firearms several times in the early volumes, both in protecting his mother, or his father from an enraged Shane, and all before leaving the camp.

Brought To Life: AMC's Carl hasn't had occasion to pick up a weapon or endure any personal hardships as of yet, but Dr. Jenner did jokingly reference little Carl as the least harmless of the group.  Foreshadowing?  We think so...