I started, and was going to read along with the show. Maybe I will read more during this summer.
It's a long time between seasons.

they've never covered what happened during the time rick was in his coma, because the book follows rick. the only thing they ever really showed in a flashback was lori hooking up with shane. but again, that whole thing was handled way differently - it legitimately is construed as a once off kind of deal there, while in the series (until the reveal) i kind of felt like lori was being made out to be this huge slut who was porking shane well before her husband went under.

either way, i would say that the series has been sufficiently removed from the books for you to be able to read them and not spoil the series for yourself in the sense of "oh i know what's going to happen and how it's going to play out," because even i don't feel like that having read every issue to date, especially in light of the detours they keep taking.

but it might spoil it for you in the sense of "um, why are they doing this when they should be doing that?" kind of deal.

still, if you're interested, i would absolutely recommend reading them. like you said, got a year between seasons so if you read the book and see where they are vs. where they're going, it might provide you with some serious speculative ammo to kill the next 12 months with.

and at least then we could talk about people like axel and michonne and the governor and woodbury and such without everyone "looking" at us like we're crazy.

feel like there should be two threads for this series, because there is so much i want to say that i haven't for the benefit of those who haven't read the books. so screw whoever said "oh well it's good not a lot of people have read/it doesn't follow the books because you'd just ruin it for us", because that's not how i roll.

Use and label spoiler tags.

I, for one, would love to read your insight on the changes, even without having read the books.

So I haven't read this thread past the first page, but is this show actually good? I downloaded the first 2 episodes, but couldn't get into the first one. It was late at night though, maybe I should watch past the first 5 minutes?

Yeah, definitely watch it.

DVD is out next week. Entertainment Weekly put up a brief interview about season 2 with Robert Kirkman here. Most interesting tidbit is that we'll be seeing Hershel's farm.

just watched all of this, pretty incredible

so bummed that Emma Bell isn't on it anymore though. may be in love with her.

Can't wait for this to come back on.