Pruitt Taylor Vince | Through the Shattered Lens

The first official day of San Diego Comic-Con 2011 saw the release of an exclusive Season 2 poster for AMC’s The Walking Dead series. Last year at this same comic-con saw this series release a first season exclusive poster painted by Drew Struzan which was a hit with fans of the comic book and the show. This time around another fan favorite artist was tapped to paint the second season poster for Comic-Con.

Tim Bradstreet is one of the well-known comic book illustrators whose comic book covers have become favorite of comic book fans everywhere. Whether they were covers for Vertigo’s Hellblazer series or for Steve Niles’ wildly popular Cal McDonald series his covers had a unique horror-noir look to them. This Bradstreet style really lends itself well to the Season 2 poster for The Walking Dead.

Today also saw a couple new production stills from Season 2 which looks to have Rick and the gang breaking down on an interstate full of wrecked and abandoned vehicles and most likely attracting all sort of zombies to their presence.

Source: AMC

The first season of the tv adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s critically-acclaimed zombie comic book series, The Walking Dead, was a huge hit for AMC despite only running a truncated 6-episode for the initial season. For it’s second season the series will get a much heftier 13-episode season which put’s it in line with most basic cable series like Breaking Bad, Mad Men and True Blood.

Both a new poster promoting the series’ return this coming October and a quick first look footage from the new season premiered within 24-hours of each other with the footage premiering during the latest season premiere of fellow AMC stablemate Breaking Bad. The poster shows the Winnie with the main characters from the first season standing upon it with hordes of zombies surrounding it. It’s a scene done many times before with the most recent one in the French zombie film, The Horde. The poses of the characters also look like they’re from solo character portraits and just photoshopped into the image. They definitely could’ve done a better job, but at least the zombies look cool.

The footage shown is pretty straightforward as we see Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes hiding and waiting behind a tree to ambush a shambling zombie with a huge rock and then doing the same to another which enters the frame. This scene looks too simple, but watching Lincoln’s expression and mannerism spoke much about how much darker his character becomes. I like how the zombies look much more emaciated here as if they’re starting to starve as their food source begin to get smaller and smaller.

The Walking Dead Season 2 will return to AMC this October. Here’s to hoping it’s early October and not another Halloween weekend premiere.

Image Source: Entertainment Weekly