Last year, Robert Kirkman made the bold decision to pull the plug on his beloved long-running comic The Walking Dead after 193 issues, despite telling fans that it would go on “forever.” Readers were not aware that the comic series was approaching the final issue until it actually released, and it caught many off guard. And that was to be expected, because Kirkman went to great lengths to ensure that nobody knew it was the final issue, which is something he ultimately thinks was a “miscalculation.”
In many ways, what Kirman managed to pull off was the ultimate prank. He got artist Charlie Adlard to create covers for issues 194 and 195, making it look like the comic would continue as it always had. Issue 194’s cover was titled “Last Shot” and featured a new character named Sheriff Kapoor, while the cover for Issue 195 featured Carl impaled by a strange man known as the Swordsman. But again, these covers only existed to trick everyone. Well played, Kirkman.
Not only did those two covers trick fans, but they also put many out-of-pocket. Appearing on websites like ComiXology, they were available for pre-order from a few retailers who had to refund confused fans after the truth came out. Recently, Kirkman told CartoonistKayfabe on YouTube about the hurdles and complications that came with actually putting the two covers out there. “We had to do that, which was great in that it kept the surprise,” he said. “No one knew that that issue was the last issue, no one even knew that that issue was gonna be massive, because it was $3.99 like every other issue, but then it arrives in stores and it’s squarebound and like the length of three or four issues, so we kept that secret as well.”
"The downside to that, though, is that the largest retailers are DCBS and Midtown Comics, and they do a ton of business through mail order. So your most valuable retail partners who order the most books had taken a ton of orders for issues that no longer exist, and they had to cancel those orders and refund those customers. So that part was possibly a miscalculation on my part."
I’m sure that if he knew about the trouble it would cause businesses, he would have done it differently. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
It’s not easy to pull off a stunt like this. Kirkman has said that it took as many as six people to keep it secret, one of the most important being Charlie Adlard. “I gave him story ideas. It’s the stupidest thing, too, because if you read #193, you can kind of see from those fake covers, ‘Oh, the story was going to go into this direction.’ It never was. I could have put literally anything on those covers, no one would have known, but for whatever reason I thought, ‘I’ll just pretend that maybe adult Carl died, and here’s Sophia and his daughter at Carl’s grave, and here’s a shot of Carl with a sword stabbed through his stomach, that’ll be fun.'”
Regardless of the backlash from fans, Kirkman feels it was worth it. “That was a lot of fun, and I’m surprised that we pulled it off,” he said. “Years of interviews, where people would be like, ‘When’s The Walking Dead going to end?’ I would just go, ‘Never. It’s just never going to end, it’s going to go on forever.’ And in my head, I’m like, ’24 issues… 16 issues… 12 issues… 8 issues,’ as the years went on. And I feel bad about that, and I don’t enjoy lying, but to preserve a surprise like that? I feel like it’s important.”
The comics may have ended, but we still have the TV show, which doesn’t show signs of slowing down. We’ve got the much-hyped season 10 finale coming later this year. And then there’s season 11, the new season of Fear The Walking Dead, World Beyond, and the Rick Grimes movies in development. It’s a very good time to be a Walking Dead fan!
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