HERE BE SPOILERS

After a few episodes spent back in Atlanta with an pretty much entirely new storyline at Grady Memorial, we’re able to make a few comparisons to the comic! Granted, tonight’s episode (click here for the full recap, we’re just hitting the big comparisons below) is still not a close match to events in the comic, but plot-wise I think it is very much in the spirit of the comic and the episodes that find Rick and company on the road. And obviously tonight’s death calls for a comparison. Let’s get started. Oh, and a warning that some of the comic panels below are pretty graphic.

SHIREWILT/WILTSHIRE

Here’s a cute one before we get to the nitty gritty. Robert had mentioned before that the community that Shane and Andrea scout on the show looking for Sophia was, in fact, Wiltshire Estates. So I guess they couldn’t name another place Wiltshire. But why not nod to the original walled community-turned-hell by switching the name up to Shirewilt?

Both communities offer promise and both communities end in disaster. In the comic, Rick and his group find Wiltshire Estates very early on (Issue 8). Rick sees the walls and thinks that they’ll offer refuge from the undead. At this point he’s not even thinking about the human threat—he’s still naive. Well it doesn’t really matter because the community is already inhabited. By a ton of walkers. The group manages to escape, but barely, and not without losses.

Fun fact, it’s rumored that this sign outside Wiltshire (that was VERY unfortunately covered in snow when the group arrived) is the inspiration behind the classic “DO NOT OPEN/DEAD INSIDE” sign from the pilot:

EXIT TYREESE

Tyreese, he of the beanie and the hammer, was pretty different from the alpha male in the comic. Yes, he was also quick to anger, but he had given up violence for the most part and urged diplomacy and peace. He wasn’t really able to move into the role of Rick’s right hand man that he occupied in the comic. He also entered the story later and exited later, living well past the prison assault (which we compared here). Let’s take a quick look at both (the comic panels have been heavily truncated):

We see that Tyreese’s comic death (from Issue 46) was brutal, shocking, and a pivotal event in one of the largest story arcs in the comics (poor Hershel takes his place in the show). On the show, Tyreese’s death is almost serene. Yes, the confrontation with the walker is violent but we get to live with Tyreese and he dreams and dies. It’s utterly unlike any death on the show before.

And last, we’ve shown this before, but in the comic, Tyreese’s final appearance (outside his one-off issue), is as a decapitated walker head in Issue 49. They used this in the show as well, for his prison-death stand-in Hershel: