New York Comic-Con: ‘The Walking Dead’ Creator Spoils A Comic Book Death And Admits He Knows How The Outbreak Started

The New York Comic-Con is underway for 2016, which means lots of new and exciting updates on many varied fandoms. In regard to The Walking Dead, the creator of both the comics and the TV series, Robert Kirkman, has dropped some pretty interesting news.

Spoiler Alert: This article discusses AMC’s The Walking Dead as well as the comic books the TV series is based on. Please proceed with caution if you wish to avoid potential spoilers.

Firstly, Robert Kirkman dropped an absolute bombshell on those in the audience attending the New York Comic-Con comic book panel who hadn’t read the latest Walking Dead comic. For those of you who have read Issue #159 of the Walking Dead comic, this is now old news, but if you have purchased your copy and haven’t had a chance to read it yet, you need to look away now.

In Issue #159 of the latest Walking Dead comic, a death occurs. However, this death is one fans have been looking forward to for quite some time. No, it’s not the death of resident evil, Negan, but of his lethal bat, Lucille. As Yahoo! points out, the delicious irony is that her death occurs because Negan is beating another person to death with it. Negan kills Lucille — his most prized possession — in the Walking Dead comics. As to be expected, he completely loses it after this event in true Negan fashion. Surprisingly, though, his initial reaction is not filled with swear words.

Lucille’s demise in the Walking Dead comic books comes at a time when television fans are just being introduced to the lethal weapon. In the Season 6 cliffhanger finale of AMC’s The Walking Dead Negan was finally introduced after a whole season of being teased about him via the characters of the Hilltop community who have to pay a tithe to Negan’s group to avoid retribution. Rick’s group thought they would be able to bring down Negan’s group easily but discovered Negan and the Saviors are much tougher than they anticipated. Season 6 ended with Negan swinging Lucille at the head of one of Rick’s group. Since the cliffhanger, the internet has, collectively, lost its mind trying to work out who Negan’s victim was and AMC have tried to work out how to market Season 7 of The Walking Dead without revealing who died.

As well as Lucille’s demise at the hands of Negan, Robert Kirkman also discussed the origin story for the Walking Dead comics. Unfortunately, according to Polygon, Kirkman revealed that, while he knows how it all started, the reason for the zombie apocalypse will never be uncovered in the comics. The reason being is that he thinks it would be too unrealistic for the current survivors to suddenly find out.

“What am I going to do? Have a scientist walk up and say the president was working with NASA … Any effort to have them become aware of the source would bring the comic into the realm of science fiction and I don’t think that would be necessary.”

Don’t fear, though, Robert Kirkman plans to release the reason for the zombie outbreak at some point in book form. However, for this to occur, the Walking Dead comics will have to have run their course.

“I’ll publish a little book that explains it because I’ll be broke,” Kirkman revealed at the New York Comic-Con comic book panel on Thursday.

The New York Comic-Con comic book panel that featured Robert Kirkman also included Skybound Entertainment editorial director Sean Mackiewicz. The panel was moderated by Jason Mantzoukas.

How do you think the outbreak started in The Walking Dead? Let us know your thoughts and theories by commenting below.

The Walking Dead returns to AMC with Season 7 on Sunday, October 23, at 9 p.m. ET.

[Featured Image by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for SiriusXM]