SDCC2013: The Walking Dead Comic Book 10th Anniversary Panel
The following individual wanted to know how many times Kirkman had stopped himself from violently altering the course of the story. He wanted to know what changes were planned but decided against. Kirkman told the audience member that he couldn’t say because he might still follow through on those ideas. He did, however, mention that Abraham’s death wasn’t planned. When Dwight attacked, they were going to have a tussle and Abraham was going to survive. Kirkman decided against this outcome while plotting the issue because he didn’t think it felt right. He was left with a lot of plans for Abraham that he could no longer do. He likes that characters die at times when it is not convenient and that it forced him to change things around.
The next audience member was looking to settle an argument with a friend as to whether the zombies or the remaining humans are actually the walking dead. He told his friend that he was pretty sure that the guys that are walking and dead are “The Walking Dead.” Kirkman said he wanted to leave this open to interpretation. He told the man that he should feel free to tell his friend that he, the audience member, was absolutely right.
The sixteenth person up asked where Kirkman got the idea for Ezekiel and the tiger. Kirkman thinks Ezekiel is important to the book. It’s people like Ezekiel and Negan who would have survived the world to this point. He thought that if readers had met Rick at this point in the character’s development, they would probably think he was a little crazy too. If they had as gradual an introduction to Negan or Ezekiel, they might be more sympathetic to the characters. He said he was trying to be accurate to this new world where all of the nice people were dead.
The next audience member wanted to know if Kirkman ever saw the book continuing without Rick. Kirkman said, “Sure.” He reminded the audience that no one was safe. He thought it would change the series to an extent, but that the book could survive without Rick.
The next guy up wanted to know if they would bring the Vatos back. Kirkman reminded him that they were shown to be dead in some material that was cut from a season two episode.
The subsequent curious reader wanted to know if there were any characters that were based off of family or friends. Kirkman told him, “Not really.” He said that some feature aspects of Kirkman himself. He had worked at a pizza place once. That’s why Glenn worked at one. He told the audience that he also has tanks with dead heads in them. Kirkman said that might have used first names of friends, but he otherwise avoids using friends as a basis for characters. He said he felt it would be a bad idea to use friends as they might be offended when their namesakes were killed off.
During a brief lull in the questioning, Kirkman used the time to playfully antagonize the audience for allowing such a thing to happen. Someone quickly stepped up to the microphone and wanted to know if Kirkman had anticipated so much flack over the loss of Carl’s eye. He said that he always anticipates flack. He’ll have readers tell him the series is terrible and then write back months later to tell him it’s awesome. He continued saying that it was hard to anticipate what the audience wants and so he writes for himself.
SDCC2013: The Walking Dead Comic Book 10th Anniversary Panel
07/24/2013 @ 5:49 am
[…] Questions asked during the panel included topics such as the Hunters, Negan and his tiger, the differences in the creative process between the medium of television and that of comics, how often Kirkman has drastically deviated from a planned plot and more. Read the full article over at walkingdeadforums.com. […]
SDCC2013: The Video Game Culture of Zombies and Dead Rising 3 Panel
07/29/2013 @ 11:15 pm
[…] The panel had some very amusing banter between the panelists and some fantastic answers to audience questions. Of note were Jessica Chobot’s favorite zombie video game moment and Max Brooks’ thoughts on why the zombie genre continues to thrive. Read the full article over at walkingdeadforums.com. […]