I’m not trying to scare anybody. If that somehow happens as a result of reading this comic, that’s great, but really… that’s not what this book is about. What you hold in your hands is the most serious piece of work I’ve done so far in my career. I’m the guy that created Battle Pope; I hope you guys realize what a stretch this is for me. It’s really not that hard to believe when you realize that I’m delving into subject matter that is so utterly serious and dramatic…
Zombies.
To me, the best zombie movies aren’t the splatter fests of gore and violence with goofy characters and tongue-in-cheek antics. Good zombie movies show how messed up we are, they make us question our station in society… and our society’s station in the world. They show us gore and violence and all that cool stuff too… but there’s always an undercurrent of social commentary and thoughtfulness.
Give me Dawn of the Dead over Return of the Living Dead any day. To me, zombie movies are thought-provoking, dramatic fiction, on par with any Oscar-worthy garbage that’s rolled out year after year. Movies that make you question the fabric of our very society is what I like. And in good zombie movies… you get that by the truckload.
With The Walking Dead I want to explore how people deal with extreme situations and how these events CHANGE them. I’m going in for the long haul. You guys are going to get to see Rick change and mature to the point that when you look back on this book you won’t even recognize him. I hope you guys are looking forward to a sprawling epic, because that’s the idea with this one.
Everything in this book is an attempt at showing the natural progression of events that I think would occur in these situations. This is a very character-driven endeavor. How these characters get there is much more important than them getting there. I hope to show you reflections of your friends, your neighbors, your families, and yourselves, and what their reactions are to the extreme situations in this book.
So, if anything scares you… great, but this is not a horror book. And by that I do not mean we think we’re above that genre. Far from it, we’re just setting out on a different path here. This book is more about watching Rick survive than it is about watching zombies pop around the corner and scare you. I hope that’s what you guys are into.
More often than not zombie movies feel like a slice of a person’s life until whoever is in charge of the movie gets bored. So we get to know the character, they have an adventure and then, BOOM, as soon as things start getting good… those pesky credits start rolling.
The idea behind The Walking Dead is to stay with the character, in this case, Rick Grimes for as long as is humanly possible. I want The Walking Dead to be a chronicle of years of Rick’s life. We will NEVER wonder what happens to Rick next, we will see it. The Walking Dead will be the zombie movie that never ends.
Well… not for a good long time at least.
—Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone By