The Walking Dead returns to AMC on October 23rd and Robert Kirkman is helping promote it on another AMC show, Geeking Out with Kevin Smith and Greg Grunberg. He had some interesting things to say about the ending of both the television and the comic book and how never the twain shall meet.
Guesting on Geeking Out, Kirkman addressed a rumor about wanting to end the comic series at the same time the TV series wraps up. His response was a resounding “No.”
“I hope the show ends and the comic keeps going,” Kirkman says of the Image comic he created with artist Tony Moore. “The comic was the comic before the show and so I try to maintain that. Like I know how I want to end The Walking Dead and so I can't tell…anyone because I don't want it on the show before I get it in my comic. So it's tough, it's tough.
Kirkman is getting close again to comments he made (and later apologized for) about George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire book series and how he feeds information to the producers on HBO's Game of Thrones. “That's the one thing I'm disappointed in George R.R. Martin for doing,” he said. “He should have just been like, ‘F-k you. You make it up now, I'll get to mine when I'm ready.””
Personally I'm frustrated as a reader of Martin's books that I won't be able to avoid many big spoilers (if not the ending itself) because the HBO show is farther ahead now. AMC's The Walking Dead has certainly diverged from its source material plenty already so a different ending doesn't seem strange. What will be odd is how Kirkman will have to deal with the inevitable end of the show.
“If the show were to ever end, ever, at any point and the comic was still going I would have to sit down with Scott [Gimple] and pretend I have no idea how to end it,” he said, “and then work with him to try and come up with a new ending.”
(via io9)