How “The Walking Dead” Almost Ended

Yesterday, we reported that Robert Kirkman pulled a fast one on millions of fans and ended The Walking Dead comic book series with a super-sized issue #193 that is hitting comic book shops as we speak. We’ll get to what happens in the actual book in our next post, but first, we wanted to share Kirkman’s original vision for the ending of the book. Personally, I’m happy about the change because Kirkman’s first draft was just a little too dark.

Here’s Kirkman in his own words:

“The big storyline NO WAY OUT ended with Rick proclaiming that Alexandria was a place worth fighting for, that they could no longer keep moving from place to place… they had to take a stand, lay down roots and start building from there. Their nomad days were behind them. Well, for years… that had been planned to be… the end. Rick would make his proclamation, and the speech would end with a big close-up on Rick’s face, you’d turn the page, and Rick’s face would be the same, only it was a statue… and you’d zoom out and see the full statue with some vines growing on the bottom of it… cracks forming… and you’d realize that it was quite OLD.
 
“We’d keep zooming out until we saw that the statue was in Alexandria, the same place where he gave the speech, but it was different. It was old and rundown, broken windows and missing doors. We would keep zooming out until a zombie walked by, then another… and we’d see that Rick had brought them to Alexandria, given this grand speech about rebuilding civilization and SUCCEEDED to the point that they built a statue to honor him… but in the end, the dead won, society crumbled again, this time seemingly for good… and that was it.”

Source: CBM