NOVEMBER 2016 ;e Costco Connection 69
SPECIAL SECTION
ARTS&ENTERTAINMENT
BY BRYAN REESMAN
ROBERT KIRKMAN’S
life is a passionate jug-
gling act. The writer-
creator of The Walking
Dead comic book, on
which the television
series is based, has been
co-producing other fare
through his Skybound
Entertainment produc-
tion company, including
the movie Air, the Cinemax series Outcast,
the AMC prequel Fear the Walking Dead and
the forthcoming pre-apocalypse series Five
Year. But the 37-year-old horror mogul takes
it in stride, thanks to a laid-back demeanor. “I
think that’s the only way I can do it,” Kirkman
tells The Connection from Skybound’s Los
Angeles office. “If I were stressed out about
this stuff I would explode.”
The AMC show that made him a house-
hold name began life as a comic, and Costco is
now carrying three 48-issue compendiums of
The Walking Dead that will introduce TV fans
to the original source material. Even in black
and white, the comic version is harsher and
bleaker than its onscreen relation, some char-
acters exist only in the TV versions and char-
acter arcs, associations and deaths can differ.
On the flip side, the show offers more poig-
nant moments between characters.
The differences might throw unsuspect-
ing readers off, but Kirkman embraces them
then do something else,” he explains. “But we
also get new people in there doing new things,
so a lot of new ideas get thrown around.
Kentucky native Kirkman, a Costco member, has been writing comics professionally
since he was 20. His early credits were on titles
his 2003 series, The Walking Dead, quickly
became a hit for Image Comics, his fortunes
changed to the point where he was penning
The Walking Dead and Invincible for Image
and the Marvel Zombies series around 2006.
“Those two things happening at once double-
fixed my [debt] problem,” he quips. “I had a
pretty good year after a lot of really bad years.”
Kirkman loves writing both superhero
and undead stories, both of which, coinciden-
penning Marvel Zombies and The Astounding
Wolf-Man. “I started to realize that there was
a lot of crossover between a werewolf story
and a superhero story,” he says of the latter
series. “To a certain extent, there is a secret
identity involved and there is a lot of learning
about your new abilities and what the new
status quo of your life is, which is a hallmark
of superhero stories.”
When comparing The Walking Dead with
other cinematic zombie depictions, Kirkman
says, “I don’t think that The Walking Dead is
in any way more poignant or more dramatic
or more character driven than, say, Dawn of
the Dead. The only difference there is that
[Dawn of the Dead is] a movie. It didn’t last as
long, and you didn’t get to see those charac-
ters develop in the same way as if the movie
had been 40 hours long.”
That is where The Walking Dead has
made an impact. He recalls that while creating
it he thought about all the movies he loved
and how many unresolved questions lingered.
“Every time the credits would roll I would
apocalypse. It seemed like there
was an opportunity there.” C
