The Official Walking Dead Comic Book Discussion Thread

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
It's not too bad reading the comics after seeing the show, although the comics are more badass. Although next season I'll probably get more upset since I've seen the original story now. I still think Darryl is one of my favorite characters though.
 
Chrisplosion said:
I feel a bit lost, can someone explain the "alien" thing?
Click to expand...

Warborg said:
I don't understand it. I hope they don't pull that on TV
Click to expand...

IGN interview with Kirkman. http://www.ign.com/articles/2007/09/11/the-walking-dead-interview

IGN Comics: I recently read Image Comics: The Road to Independence from TwoMorrows Publishing, where you explain how you had to lie about the Walking Dead in order to get Image to publish the book.

Robert Kirkman: Yeah, I am a shady ****.

IGN Comics: Can you revisit that story, and how Walking Dead came about?

Kirkman: When I pitched the Walking Dead to Image, Jim Valentino and Eric Stephenson were running the company, and they both felt that the Walking Dead as a straight zombie book didn't have enough of a hook to it. So they came back and said, "Look, nobody is going to want a straight zombie book, there's not anything special about it, it's just a bunch of guys living in a world infested by zombies, and we don't think that's interesting enough, and we want you to add something else to it to entice the readers and blah blah blah." Which they often do. They'll say "Well, we like this concept, but we don't think it has enough." And that's perfectly fine. They're a publisher and they can do that. But I disagreed with them a bit.

And so I had done a few books with them, so I felt comfortable doing this - I basically just lied to them and said, "Well look, this is how it's going to be: The whole book is going to be as I pitched it, but as the issues progress, eventually I'm going to reveal that it was actually aliens who caused the zombie uprising. And it's going to be leading to this big battle between the humans and the aliens, and the aliens did this to kind of weaken the humans' military forces, and eventually it's going to be this big alien invasion." And so they said, "Oh yeah, that sounds sweet! Let's do that." And so they approved the book based on that.

And then when it came out, Eric Stephenson was reading the first issue, and he said, "So I read the issue, and it was really cool, but I didn't see any hints to what the alien invasion stuff is. Did you hint anything about that? Was there something I didn't notice? What's going on?" And I said, "Oh well, I gotta be honest with you…that stuff's not going to happen. I was kind of fibbing a little bit, and I really just want to do a straight zombie book." And at this point, the book was being pretty well received and there was a lot of buzz about it. So Eric wrote back something like, "Well that's good, because I was kind of reading the book thinking, hey he might ruin this by putting aliens in it."

So it's a funny story, and that's pretty much how it happened, but it kind of doesn't make Jim Valentino look too good. It's a funny little anecdote that people like to hear and everything, but I think when it appeared in the Image book, Jim Valetino wasn't too thrilled. It's not like he was angry with me or anything, but it kind of does him a disservice, because Jim Valentino was a very strong force early on in my career. He had given me advice on other things that greatly helped my books. For instance, the Nolan reveal in Invincible. My original plan was for that to not happen until issue twenty-five, and when I was talking about the book, Jim Valentino was there, and he said, "You know you really need to move that up, or this book might not last until twenty-five. That's the kind of thing this book might need. You need to shake things up and keep people interested in the book." So I moved the tease up to issue seven and the reveal up to issue twelve. And I would say that at the same time when he was kind of hindering the birth of the Walking Dead, he was saving Invincible. I feel bad telling that story because, like I said, it does Jim a disservice.
Click to expand...


so I guess he threw in the aliens thing just as a joke or something
 
He lied about the aliens in order to get the comics published. He wouldn't ever make it about aliens and he had no intention of doing it.

When I pitched the Walking Dead to Image, Jim Valentino and Eric Stephenson were running the company, and they both felt that the Walking Dead as a straight zombie book didn't have enough of a hook to it.
Click to expand...

I basically just lied to them and said, "Well look, this is how it's going to be: The whole book is going to be as I pitched it, but as the issues progress, eventually I'm going to reveal that it was actually aliens who caused the zombie uprising. And it's going to be leading to this big battle between the humans and the aliens, and the aliens did this to kind of weaken the humans' military forces, and eventually it's going to be this big alien invasion." And so they said, "Oh yeah, that sounds sweet! Let's do that." And so they approved the book based on that.
Click to expand...

Oh well, I gotta be honest with you…that stuff's not going to happen. I was kind of fibbing a little bit, and I really just want to do a straight zombie book.
Click to expand...
 
Now I see where this whole alien thing started, I don't generally read past the "Letters to the Editors" part after the issue ends so I never noticed that little bit. Was pretty funny but overly convoluted to make anything serious out of it. Nonetheless a good read.
 
I went back and re-read this thread.

I agree the art is horrible but I got used to it(including the b/w ), if it says anything it did seem to get a little better somewhere between 10 and 20.

I think it was brutal(sad) with what happened to Tyreese,Abraham,Carl and Glenn. I'd say Glenn gets first place with Tyreese in close second then Carl with Abraham in last. What happened to Abraham seemed cleaner for some reason.

Any bets on who gets to kill Negan(if it happens)? Carl or Rick?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom