The Walking Dead is published by Image Comics. It was created by Robert Kirkman, Cliff Rathburn, and Charlie Adlard.
In October of 2003, almost a full 16 years ago, The Walking Dead had its comic debut. Just seven years later, and again in October, The Walking Dead came to our TV screens, inspiring two spin-off series (so far), Fear the Walking Dead, which premiered in 2015, and a second series that is set to come out in 2020. Truly, the impact The Walking Dead has had on horror, particularly the zombie genre, cannot be denied.
With the concept of “zombies” dating back centuries (the English word, “zombie”, was used for the first time in 1819), the first zombie movie appearing in 1932 (White Zombie), and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead giving us our first modern (what we now view consistently as) zombies back in 1968, it’s not as if The Walking Dead (which I’m going to abbreviate to TWD) brought us some revolutionary, never-before-seen creature. Yet after this comic series began, zombies exploded (figuratively and literally in some cases).
No, the genre never went away, we’ve always had new zombie stories, but let me give you some figures. Worldwide, according to Wikipedia, from 1968 through 1978, there were 28 zombie feature films. From 2004 through 2005 there were 42 zombie feature films. In one year, after the success of TWD, there were almost double the amount of zombie films in just 1 year than in 10 full years following Romero’s film.
After TWD TV series in debut in 2010, there were a good 15+ zombie movies a year, totaling at 111 by the end of 2016. It took 6 years before the genre finally began to taper back off a bit (in 2017, there were only 9 zombie feature films). And that’s just the film industry! TWD also inspired episodic game series from Telltale Games including: The Walking Dead (season 1), The Walking Dead: Season 2, The Walking Dead: A New Frontier (season 3), The Walking Dead: The Final Season (season 4), The Walking Dead: Michonne, and 400 Days. At this point, it’s hard to find a retail store that doesn’t sell some kind of Walking Dead merchandise. Wallets, key chains, toys, books, clothing, posters, and more – it’s everywhere and on everything.
While it has definitely left its mark, I think the creative team made a good call. It was time to say “good-bye”. Despite the impact it had, ratings of the comic and series haven’t exactly been at their best. Many readers (myself included) were beginning to stop caring. I don’t know about other stores, but mine saw a shift to less and less sales, until #192 and #193. For the first time in a long time, those two issues flew off the shelves because everyone needed to at least see how it ended. That’s what we were waiting for at this point as we casually picked up our issues here and there, just reading to know what happened. Now, we finally have an answer.
I was a little surprised at the…hopefulness of issue #193. I won’t spoil anything, but I will say that it takes place several years in the future following the events of #192. The world is finally reaching stability and roamers are becoming less and less worrisome. Still, there is a lot in this final issue that reminds us of a key question the series has asked us since the beginning, is it zombies or humans that pose the real threat to humanity? Despite all of the death, especially that last one (RIP), we are given a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. It wasn’t a bleak ending, but it wasn’t a happy one either. It’s just an end. And honestly, that’s exactly what it needed to be.
Thanks for the ride, Robert Kirkman, Cliff Rathburn, and Charlie Adlard. We can’t wait to see what you have in store for us next.
