Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard, the minds behind The Walking Dead comic series, showed up to Comic-Con 2016 to give some hints about where the story is headed. For a comic series that is infamous for its dark and brutal subject matter, the Comic-Con panel for Skybound’s The Walking Dead was an overly silly affair that had the attending audience in stitches.
Moderator Jason Mantzoukas was in rare form from the outset, and he had plenty of help from The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman. The tone of the event was set very early on when a baby in the audience began to cry. Mantzoukas was comically incredulous about someone bringing their baby to a panel about flesh-eating reanimated corpses, but the hilarity was only beginning. The baby’s dad said he’d leave if Kirkman would come take a picture with his child. Kirkman promptly got up from his seat, walked into the audience, took the baby into his arms, and returned to the panel to chat about skinning the undead and wearing their skin.
The goofiness continued when artist Charlie Adlard was shown a collage of his artwork from the comic. What was so funny about these pictures? It seems Adlard has a tendency to draw peoples’ butt cracks peeking out from their pants. Adlard wryly said that it was the only way he could get any nudity into the comic, and the audience burst into another fit of cackling.
In the midst of all this delightful tomfoolery, Kirkman did get cornered with one fan question. An attendee asked if Rick would be adapting some more disturbing tactics in the coming issues – specifically the whole “skinning zombies and wearing their viscera” idea – and Kirkman simply said, “You’re on to something.”
It wasn’t a very informative panel, but being entertaining is just as important to some fans. The audience at Skybound’s The Walking Dead panel was thoroughly entertained, and isn’t that what you want out of a Comic-Con experience?
