Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead, acknowledged that negative takes on the series stuck with him more than positive reactions, as he admitted that, as an author, “the detractors are the voices you hear when you’re lying awake at night.” Kirkman cited this in response to one particular criticism of his characters – one that he personally didn’t agree with, but couldn’t help fixate on.

The Walking Dead Deluxe #93 – written by Robert Kirkman, with art by Charlie Adlard – includes annotations on the issue from Kirkman, as he reflects on the behind-the-scenes process of writing the long-running zombie comic. In his comments on the issue, he raised the fact that some readers were critical of the trajectory of the series, and the actions of its characters.

While Kirkman disagreed with this negative assessment of his main group of survivors, he was frank about the fact that it was the kind of critique that kept him up at night.

Robert Kirkman Acknowledges That One Criticism Of The Walking Dead’s Plot Stuck With Him

The Walking Dead Deluxe #93 – Written By Robert Kirkman; Art By Charlie Adlard; Color By Dave McCaig; Lettering By Rus Wooten

Over the course of The Walking Dead, the story of humanity’s response to a civilization-ending catastrophe grew in complexity. Author Robert Kirkman began by charting the forging of a community out of a group of individual survivors. With the introduction of the Governor, and his people, the series shifted its focus, becoming a tale of conflict between communities, as different isolated pockets of humanity began to reformulate society in their own competing images of it. This theme would develop, and escalate, up through the end of the series’ run – of which The Walking Dead #93 represents nearly the half-way point.

As much as Rick Grimes is ostensibly the hero of The Walking Dead, one of the comic’s chief moral complexities arises from his unyielding quest to protect not just humanity in general, but his particular version of it, and his core group of survivors. In The Walking Dead Deluxe #93 Robert Kirkman formulated the harshest possible assessment of his main characters, stating:

Detractors would say that this was just a story of the characters moving from community to community, leaving destruction in their wake…and trust me, the detractors are the voices you hear when you’re lying awake at night.

While certainly an oversimplification, Kirkman noted that some form of his criticism nagged at him – and evidently, still does.

The Walking Dead’s Survivors Were Flawed, But They Did More Than “Leave Destruction In Their Wake”

A Delicate Moral Landscape

One virtue of post-apocalyptic fiction is that it can allow creators to skew traditional moral frameworks, in favor of exploring how radically altered life-or-death circumstances can reorient peoples’ understanding of right-and-wrong. Robert Kirkman did this incredibly effectively throughout The Walking Dead. As often as Rick Grimes and the series’ protagonists faced unequivocally villainous counterparts like the Governor, they were forced into ethically uncertain situations, such as their takeover of the Alexandria settlement from its existing leadership. The main characters of The Walking Dead were far from immune to factionalism, and that was important to the overall project of the series.

Aside from its zombie premise – and the occasional “versimilitude short-cut,” of the kind taken by all works of fiction – The Walking Dead held to a fairly firm standard of realism. The moral failings, or at least, moral inconsistencies, of the characters were an essential part of that. Rick Grimes and his group of survivors weren’t perfect, but they did more than just “leave destruction in their wake.” As Robert Kirkman acknowledged in The Walking Dead Deluxe #93, they acted and reacted in response to the conditions of their environment, in a way that the most organically-written fictional characters do.