This article contains discussion of sexual violence.
Since bursting onto the scene in 2003, writer Robert Kirkman’s sprawling zombie epic Kirkman revealed a surprising influence on the franchise. Writing in the appendices of the most recent issue of the series' full-color reprint, The Walking Dead Deluxe #57, Kirkman gave an intimate of how having children changed his storytelling instincts - making the series more violent and disturbing than ever.
In issue #57 - from Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Dave McCaig - one of the transitional stories after the Prison massacre arc but before the survivors reached Alexandria, Rick and Carl Grimes are set upon by murderous raiders, who attempt to rape Carl. In describing the set-up for the sequence, Kirkman notes that, by the time he was writing this part, he’d already had children. He recalls that "it made me significantly more sensitive to violence. Scenes that wouldn't have bothered me at all suddenly upset me more now that I had kids.” However, counterintuitively, this did not cause Kirkman to shy away from acts of terrible violence in his stories. Instead, it caused him to lean ever further into them.
Walking Dead Got Darker Because Kirkman Feared Losing His Edge
The Walking Dead being published in black and white gave it surprising latitude in depicting horrific acts, and it was never known for pulling its punches. The series is known for its particularly morbid and piercing depictions of realistic violence, with the prison arc itself concluding with the horrendous climax of Lori Grimes and her infant daughter Judith being viciously gunned down. However, Kirkman reveals in his annotations for issue #57 - which features one such incredibly disturbing scene - that having children made him more sensitive to these moments - something which he felt he needed to push back against. Kirkman says:
So what happened was if I ever felt myself pulling back... It would make me push even further and further into this direction. To prove to myself that having kids wasn't going to ruin the series.
The odd side effect of that... is that having kids... kind of made my work darker. What would happen is that I would start to think, "you're only pulling back because you've gone soft because now you have kids!" That would make me push against that notion and go forward no matter what. The crazy thing is, pre-kids... maybe I would have talked myself out of doing some of the darker stuff... but post-kids, I forced myself to ignore that objectivity.
Walking Dead's Kids Speak to its Biggest Themes
It's fitting that The Walking Dead grew more bleak and violent after Kirkman became a father. After all, clearly one of the message of The Walking Dead, like many great zombie works across the various media, is that civilization is built upon shared security and a sense of community among peoples, even as these elements of society are more fragile than they appear. The treatment of children is often used as a moral barometer for different groups within the series - most notably with the Whisperers - even as the franchise treats their chances of survival in a zombie apocalypse as darkly realistic.
The Walking Dead Deluxe continues to offer immersive insights into the process Robert Kirkman used to craft his narrative, but there's particular joy in learning what events - from fatherhood to the books' growing sales - influenced the narrative, and when those changes took place.
