It’s rare that a cross-media phenomenon originating in comics comes along and I’m in no way familiar with the source material. From Watchmen (alright, not a “phenomenon”, but still widely talked about) to Kick-Ass to Scott Pilgrim, if something’s big enough and good enough to be turned into a successful film or TV series, I should at least have, at some point, encountered the book it’s based on.

But right now, everyone’s talking about The Walking Dead, and I’m completely oblivious.

First off, I have no plans whatsoever to watch the TV series. As mentioned before, I’m not really into horror at all – by which I mean I’m a total wuss – and even though TWD is apparently more atmospheric than explicit, it’s just not really the sort of thing I feel like I can put myself through (even though it’s got Mr Svenning in it). So it is one of those adaptations that will in all likelihood completely pass me by, no matter how good it’s actually meant to be. But I have less of a problem with horror when it comes to comics (don’t get me started on how much I love old EC stuff) – and what’s more, there are lots of elements of post-apocalyptic and zombie-based survival fiction that interest me (I’ve read World War Z, and loved it) – it’s just that for some reason I can’t cope with watching them dramatised.

You’d think, therefore, that I’d at least have tried to read The Walking Dead. But no. I think part of it is that I didn’t get onboard at the beginning or anything – and it’s harder to hop on to a long-running series, and make the commitment to buy and read all the trades, the longer it gets; that is, unless you’re certain you’re going to love it. It’s why, for example, I’ve only ever caught up on some of Y: The Last Man, whereas I’ve read all of Ex Machina because I caught it at the start. But Walking Dead existed for a long time before becoming a real smash hit – and yes, there are plenty of people who’ve discovered it in the last year or so and caught up on the whole thing, but they probably don’t have as many other comics to read as I do.

The identity of the writer doesn’t help much, either. I don’t think Kirkman’s a terrible writer or anything, but I’ve certainly not read anything by him that I’d call “great”. Perhaps it’s just unfortunate that the two things of his that get the most praise – The Walking Dead and Invincible – are the ones that have seemed too impenetrably long and involved for me to try, but I’m sure that if he was a writer I clicked with, I’d have found something in the odds and sods of his other work I’ve read to enjoy. But I haven’t, and that makes me less inclined to rush out and buy the trades, too.

Not that it’s a comic I’d turn down the chance to read if it were presented to me, mind. I’d put it in the same bracket as something like 100 Bullets in that respect – I’d never have gone out and bought Azzarello’s series, either, but courtesy of someone lending me a full set of the trades bit-by-bit, I was recently able to read the whole thing. The Walking Dead feels the same. If I found a library that stocked it, I’d probably get something out of working my way through it (and in fact, for reasons connected to my job, I did recently get offered a spare set of the trades that was apparently kicking around – not sure what happened to that, though, I should probably see if it’s still going) – but at the end of the day, there are only so many comics you can ever get around to buying, and there are still so many out there that by virtue of their subject matter, or their creative teams, feel like more pressing gaps to fill in my reading history than The Walking Dead does.