The creator of The Walking Dead gets his game on in this series of video interviews.
Though long inspired by Image Comics and its founders, it wasn't until he worked at Marvel that Robert grasped the true importance of what Image represented. Image’s creator owned business model allowed comic book creators to retain the rights to their own work and characters, whereas many other companies paid creators only a page rate, not allowing them to retain creative and financial control over their work. Shortly thereafter, he left Marvel to become not only a partner in Image Comics (the first since the company's inception), but one of the comic book industry’s biggest and most outspoken advocates of creator-owned comics.
Reaffirming his commitment to Image and creator-owned comics proved fortuitous for Robert. Although there had been talk of turning The Walking Dead into a TV series as early as 2005, Kirkman notes, "I'd done failure after failure: Brit, Tech Jacket, Battle Pope. The Walking Dead comic was turned down by Image multiple times. I'm incredibly bullheaded, though, and I like taking risks more than I like taking ‘no’ for an answer.
After many false starts, "We were passed on by lots of networks," Kirkman confides, AMC picked up The Walking Dead as a television series in 2009 before the pilot was even shot. Kirkman didn't believe it despite being on set when the first season was shot in Atlanta, and confesses it still hadn’t sunk in, even when the October 2010 airdate was announced. The reality of the situation only dawned on him as he was showing the first episode alongside the show’s cast at San Diego Comic-Con that July. The record ratings for its October, 2010 premiere led to an instant second season pick-up. Kirkman and his family relocated to Los Angeles, so he could be an active voice in the writer's room for season two.
For many, adding a successful television series to an already amazing career in comics, would be a dream come true. Robert admits that at 33, he had already achieved his professional goals – "to write, own and control my comic books and continue to write for as long as I want" –six years earlier. He’s just as quick to point out, that while writing The Walking Dead and Invincible for the rest of his life may offer contentment, even the bonus of having a successful TV show has left him far from complacent.
"My whole life is driven by the fear that it's all going to go away,” he explains. "I've had the crappy day jobs and I don't want to go back to them, but I don't know if this will support me when I'm 60, so I need to work twice as hard now. I have to pitch other TV shows, I have to work hard to ensure their success, and I want to contribute to the survival and encouragement of new voices in the comic book industry in general."
