Posted in: Comics | Tagged: HRL, journalistic untegrity, robert kirkman, sdcc, The Walking Dead, walking dead

Robert Kirkman "Working Toward" End Of The Walking Dead Comic

Published Fri, 21 Jul 2017 14:30:25 -0500

A story is making the rounds in the press about the imminent end of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic book. The basic headline: Robert Kirkman Is Ending The Walking Dead Comic. But don't let that feeling of dread, like you're surrounded by flesh-eating zombies who want to cancel your favorite comic book series, overcome you just yet. The reports of Walking Dead's demise may be a bit exaggerated.

The story being sourced by the stories being sourced for most of the headlines comes from MoviePilot and its transcription of Kirkman's comments from the Walking Dead panel:

"I think about two or three years ago, I had a pretty good idea for a definitive ending. I have known that since then and been working towards that, so I know exactly where I'm going and what's gonna happen when I get there.

When I first started Walking Dead, I knew about the prison story line. So, I knew that they would eventually live in a prison, I knew they would eventually encounter the Governor, I knew there'd be some stuff that happens and I was working towards that. By the time I was at issue 6, I thought of stuff past that, so that's kind of how it worked. I had this 50 or 60 issue chunk of story and every issue I wrote, it just kept moving, so I always had this big road map ahead of me.

There was an ending I had in mind that I was thinking, 'Oh, this would be kind of a cool ending.' I got to a point where it should've happened and I was like, 'I'm not done yet.' And this was before the show. It got to a point where I would've had to start building to it and I was like, 'Nah.' So, I just threw that out and then I just kept going because I had all kinds of cool stuff I wanted to do."

So what can we really take from these statements? Robert Kirkman has an idea for a definitive ending for The Walking Dead. He's had it for several years, and he's working toward it. He's also had a planned ending before, and decided to abandon it to continue to tell more stories.

So, basically, The Walking Dead will end someday, which was a reasonable assumption before this panel, but there's no planned date for it to end yet. But let's not let that sort of nuance get in the way of a good clickbait headline.

And that's how you comics journalism.

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