NYCC: Robert Kirkman Talks Walking Dead Comic

The Walking Dead has never been more popular. The TV show is heading into its highly anticipated sixth season, it’s gotten a spinoff show via Fear The Walking Dead, and all that attention has brought new attention to the ongoing comic still written by Robert Kirkman.

The current event in the comic is the “Whisperer War”, and it’s having a big toll on the characters in the series. At NYCC, Kirkman got to talk about the event, as well as reveal whether this war could come to the TV series.

“Probably eventually if we don’t get cancelled this year,” Kirkman said,

He then went into great depth about the whisperers themselves.

“When they showed up in the comic, it was so chilling and so unsettling…and I’m happy that that tone has made it into the comics,” Mantzoukas said, asking about how Kirkman came up with the idea for the group’s “dead suits” of zombified corpses. “I feel like it’s something that evolved over time,” the writer explained. “I go to some dark places.” He then revealed that with that idea and others, he plans such ideas out well in advance. “I’m always thinking ‘How do I up the ante? How do I do something new?’” he said joking the next big idea would be “live sharks on the hoods of cars…But I think it was at least a year or two [between thinking of the Whisperers and putting them in the comic.] I’m cooking all that stuff up in the background while I’m writing issues.”

The topic of Negan also got brought up, as fans wondered whether a “less sweary” Negan could work in the TV show, whereas the comics have him as a foul mouthed monster.

“I still feel like that’s Negan,” Kirkman said of the show version. “There’s a personality and a charm to him, and I feel that’s what makes Negan Negan. The swearing is really just the cherry on the ice cream.”