The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse!

Dead Reckoning: Robert Kirkman Brings Zombies to Don Draper’s Backyard: The Q: GQ

At the risk of sounding like the smug, self-satisfied early-adopters we are, we’ve been telling people for years—years!—that Robert Kirkman’s epic post-zombie-apocalypse comic book Walking Dead is an obsession-worthy TV show waiting to happen. Reading it in collected form—it’s available in a variety of formats, but we recommend the Walking Dead Compendium, which collects issues #1-48 in a single phone-book-sized volume—is the closest thing in print form to inhaling an entire season of something Wire-like on DVD. So it makes sense that this fall, AMC’s rolling out the first eight episodes of a Frank Darabont-produced Walking Dead TV show. Kirkman’s book, which hit the 75-issue mark in July, is one of the finest horror comics ever published; between the strength of the source material, Darabont’s pedigree as a horror auteur, and AMC’s original-programming track record, we can’t conceive of a scenario where this show doesn’t do for zombies, heretofore not exactly a home-run TV-drama MacGuffin, what Breaking Bad did for meth, what Mad Men did for charismatic-prick ad guys, and what Rubicon seems to be doing for crossword-puzzle obsessives who think Will Shortz is reading their minds. We spoke to Kirkman last month about killing fan-favorite characters, turning his back on corporate-comics gigs, and the cinematic purgatory that is the gas-station DVD rack. GQ: You went into massive credit-card debt to self-publish the first comics you made… [Interview Link]