Robert Kirkman on the Meaning of Zombies 

Robert Kirkman is a busy man these days. The creator of “The Walking Dead” is still writing his comic (issue #138 was recently released), is already working on season six of the monster-hit TV show, is overseeing everything from new comics to video games to TV shows to movies at his Skybound Entertainment, and is doing the conference circuit. This weekend included a string of appearances at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

In public, and even in private for what little we saw, Mr. Kirkman comes across as low-key — somebody who grew up loving video-games and comics, who worked at a comic-book shop in his hometown of Cynthiana, Ky., and just happened to fall into his current circumstances.

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“If I can do it, anybody can do it,” he said onstage at one event. But in speaking to the 36-year old husband and father of two, what seeps through that slacker image is a passionately driven artist and businessman who’s been mixing the two ever since he started self-publishing his first comic, “Battle Pope,” and who’s gotten where he is by being as determined to succeed as his characters are to outrun flesh-eating monsters.

I moderated a panel with Mr. Kirkman on Saturday, and had a few minutes alone beforehand, sitting in a curtained-off green room in the dark backstage of the Palmer Events Center. We talked about The Walking Dead spinoff show, why zombies are popular, how he manages his career and whether Daryl Dixon’s love for Beth Greene was platonic or romantic.

Zombies are inherently about people. Your average vampire or werewolf is about a supernatural monster that’s completely unrelatable. But zombie stories are about human struggle, which is relatable to anybody. And I also think zombies are a physical embodiment of death, which is a fear we all have.

[The] current world climate and situations that are on the news today kind of give people an overwhelming sense of dread about their everyday lives. It means that “Walking Dead” can be a way to sit down and experience those feelings of fear and dread in a manageable way. Like, I’m working through my issues of worrying about if my boss is going to lay me off because [things are] not going well at the company by worrying about Daryl Dixon dying because zombies are attacking him.

The title is still to be revealed, development’s going really well, the pilot’s shot, we’re getting ready to start filming more episodes, so everything’s underway. We’re playing with the timeline a little. Our show will start at an earlier time than the other show started. It’s definitely not a prequel because it’s not like this show will end at the time when the other show started. We will be going into the zombies and watching civilization fall and seeing people struggle with that in real time as opposed to having someone wake up from a coma and it’s already happening.

So we get to deal with a lot of things we skipped over, there’s all the gaps in character development that we didn’t really get the opportunity to play with in the other show that we get to explore in this one, which is really exciting. It’s new characters, in a new region. It’s in the world of The Walking Dead and there are so many familiar elements that will exist in this show but at the same time we’re going to be telling our stories, so it’s going to be far different than you expect.

From day one, we’ve always been hearing, like, what’s going on over here, what’s over there, because the (original) show has been so laser focused on one region that we recognize there’s a tremendous opportunity to open this world and add to the overall experience of watching “The Walking Dead.”

To me, I look at it like a challenge. I created “The Walking Dead” when I was 23 or 24. So, what can I do now? I think I was 34 or 35 when I started working on this (the second show). What can the new, older me come up with that can top what that [expletive] young version of me did, and that’s a fun challenge, to try and compete with myself?

On the “Walking Dead” comic: There’s where the comic is now, where I’m actively writing it, and there’s where the comic goes, which I know a tremendous amount of information, years’ worth of stories, that only I know.

On his career: The way that I’ve always kind of operated was, let me look at what’s possible, and let me look at what’s likely, and let me kind of strive for what is marginally possible but more than likely not gonna happen. So I always kind of striving to accomplish things that if I were to ever say out loud, “my plan is to do this,” people would say, “you are a crazy person.” But by shooting for the moon you may possibly end up on top of a mountain and that’s not so bad either. That’s kind of the way I look at things. I have big, insane, crazy plans that I want to achieve that I’m not going to be able to, but I feel like the trying is the fun part.

I feel like I always have to be working toward something or I get bored or like sick of myself, angry at myself for being lazy, so even though things are going really well for me right now I’m never really – like, life-wise I always try to be present, and I’m not thinking about the future and being distracted and that stuff – but career-wise, I feel like if I ever rest for a minute and go, “hey, you’re doing really well,” I feel like everything will crumble.

No. I mean, Daryl loved Beth as much as he loved Sophia. There wasn’t a romantic relationship there, in my opinion. I think that there was a camaraderie, there was a friendship, there was an understanding, but, it’s not like there was this great romance that didn’t happen because she died.

She was very young. He maybe fell in love with her the way someone can become a surrogate father or surrogate older brother. They had a tremendous connection, but not everything has to be a romantic relationship.

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