In the midst of a massive surge of zombie-themed entertainment, The Walking Dead has been held up not only as an example of compelling comic book storytelling but as a flag bearer for the medium. The series’ allegorical exploration of the human condition and the success of its television adaptation have drawn many people into their local comic shops for Walking Dead collections. For students of comics history, there is a certain delicious irony in the fact that a raw, gory, terrifying saga centered around a world plagued by the living dead has become an Eisner Award–winning success—and one of the best comics published today. Decades ago, the title would have been held up as evidence in a Senate subcommittee meeting. Copies would have been burned for a calculated photo op while pundits pontificated about the ways the publication was rotting the brains of our nation’s youth. In those days, The Walking Dead would never have survived, but, paradoxically, without the anti–horror comics hysteria of the forties and fifties, this series might never have come into existence at all.

Soulless, unthinking, hungry monsters. Creatures from the depths of hell were marching en masse to consume the citizens of this great nation and destroy everything we knew and loved. Armed only with his intellect and the weapons of his trade, one man was determined to stand before this horde of horrors and defend his home from their slavering, animalistic wrath. Yes, Senator Joseph McCarthy would stop the Communists from taking over the  …