The Walking Dead has been a global phenomenon, and with the release of the latest collected volume What Comes After, we have an interview to give you an insight into the man himself.

You’ve recently surpassed 100 issues of The Walking Dead. This far in, when you’re making the book, is it still the same as when you started? How is making it different now, or is it?

Robert Kirkman: It’s funny, I try to make the book the same way, but sometimes I think about how different I am, you know, I’ve been working on this for 100 issues. When I started the book, I was living in a very bad part of the town in Kentucky I lived in, I had just gotten married to my wife, we had no children, I was very very very young, and now that I’m writing issue 100, we’re definitely in a different place in our lives, there is a TV show and all this other nonsense going on, and I have a six year old son and a three year old daughter, which is really blowing me away. The process is still the same; I’m still at my laptop, by myself, banging out script, making sure that Charlie [Adlard, The Walking Dead artist] has pages, and I’m committed to the book. I love it almost more than I did in the early days, just because of the uncertainty of being able to tell my story for as long as I want has to a certain extent faded, so I actually can be, “Oh, I can do this now, and in 20 issues I can do this,” and I can actually build to things with much more certainty. But it is kind of ridiculous to think about just how early in the story I still feel like I am, like I’m at issue 100 and I really feel like I just started, which sounds ridiculous but it’s really exciting for me.

How are you able to keep it fresh, writing it for yourself, and not just like, “Oh, another issue of Walking Dead”?

Story-wise, I’m really excited about issue 100, because it is definitely a new beginning, an evolution of the story, it’s moving into a much different survival story, it’s much more about pockets of civilization interacting and how they survive together against these new threats that are introduced in issue 100, and it’s much less about what seems to be the only group of survivors out there traveling from place to place and being under threat of zombies. We’re really moving to a place where zombies are present, and they’re always going to be a threat, but they’re such a manageable threat that there’s not really that much time devoted to them. Issue 100 is an oversized issue, and I believe a zombie appears in maybe one or two panels in the entire issue. It’s definitely an evolution of the world, and so I guess I’m keeping things fresh by continuing the story and watching these characters progress through time, and just kind of paying attention to how their lives are going to change as they continue to live in this world. I really do feel like we have a lot of new things to do and the stories are going to be different and we’re not going to be re-treading anything that’s been done in the 100 issues prior moving forward, which is something that’s going to be really cool.

Had you planned this out, or as you’re writing you decide it’s time to expand the world and see what’s out there?

This is definitely one of four or five huge benchmarks that I was always working toward. I knew there was going to be the big prison storyline, and I knew they would eventually get to this community, and they would be surviving in that area, and I knew that I would get to this point where they would be interacting with humans on a much more regular basis, and humans that weren’t necessarily part of their group. I just didn’t know exactly when it would fall. I always have very broad stories, like they’ll go to a housing community, they’ll go to a prison, they’ll be on the road; I know that there’s different things I’m leading to, but how many issues are going to take up and what issues they’re going to fall on is always malleable as I’m telling the story.

Along with The Walking Dead, you’ve got the other comics as well as the TV shows. How hard is it to balance all of that?

It’s kind of like having an awesome hobby, and that’s all you do. It takes up a lot of time and it is sometimes a struggle to juggle them, but it’s like, “Oh, I’m going mountain climbing and I’m waterskiing and I’m building a birdhouse and I’m birdwatching and this is awesome,” and I’m having a good time with everything I’m doing. I may work 12 hours on a day or 16 hours or whatever, but I’m having fun writing Super Dinosaur, then I get to watch dailies from the TV show or have a meeting about special effects, where I’ll say, “No no no, cut that guy’s head off very high, that’ll look cooler if it’s not over the neck, because then the head will come apart in the middle and that’ll look great,” and bouncing back and forth from different stories, writing a superhero comic, writing a horror comic, writing a comic for all ages, and meeting with the writers for Thief of Thieves, it really keeps me energized to bounce back and forth between different projects, and I really enjoy it.

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