Although the zombies were popular during the late 2000s and 2010, they were considered mainly featured when the comic book Robert Kirkman set "The Walking Dead". Those were the early 2000s and Interruption of "28 days later" It was not even published in the United States. So, when Kirkman approached the image of the comic book company with the idea of ​​a black-and-white zombie series, it hesitated.

"When I imposed" The Walking Dead "on the picture, Jimim Valentino and Eric Stephenson led the company and both thought" The Walking Dead "as a right book of zombie did not have enough hook," Kirkman explained. In an interview with Ign in 2007. It may look silly in retrospect, but the lift for "The Walking Dead" is really a kind of basic: it's a standard story of a group of survivors in the zombie apocalypse, with the main thing that distinguishes its pure longevity. "The Walking Dead" is advancing because it allows his characters to slowly develop over the years, but that feature is not immediately highlighted in the first edition of the comics.

Kirkman's solution to this problem was to do a little bit of what he called "sort of phibing" with publishers. He told them that "The Walking Dead" would not only be a story about zombies, but zombies versus aliens narrative. As he explained:

"I had doni a few books with them, so i felt Comfortable Doing this - i basically just lied to them and said, 'well look, this is how i do to be: the whole book is going to be as i pitched, but the is the issuesuesues. Progress, event. The military forces of the people, and in the end will be this great foreign invasion. " And so they said, "Oh, yes, it sounds sweet! And so, they approved the book based on it."

It didn't take long for publishers to realize that Kirkman lied to them, but so far they no longer care. Kirkman recalled that publisher Eric Stevenson had completed the reading of the first issue after it was published; He said he liked it, but did not notice hints about foreigners responsible for the occurrence. Kirkman then remembered that he told Stephenson: "Oh, well, I have to be honest with you ... That things won't happen. I was a little bit of a little, and I really want to make a right book with zombie."

"And at this point, the book was pretty well accepted and there was a lot of buzz about it," Kirkman continued. "So, Eric wrote something like," Well, that's good, because I was kind of reading the book thinking, "Hey, he could destroy this by putting aliens in that." "

Kirkman noted that the other publisher he approved, Jimim Valentino, was "not too thrilled" to find out about the fraud. Kirkman said he felt a little guilty of telling this story to reporters because Valentino was such a positive force behind his work "Invincible", another longtime comic book series From Kirkmann it It started shortly before "The Walking Dead" And he has since enjoyed his own popular TV adaptation. Valentino is a Kirkman (and has) a lot of respect.

"I feel bad to tell that story because, as I said, it does Jimim diversion," Kirkman admitted.

He also noted that people seem to want to hear this anecdote, probably for the same reasons why people want to hear about how the first book "Harry Potter" was rejected by 12 publishers. It helps to give the author a fun narrative for shining and contributes to the comforting idea that people who reject us do not know what they are talking about. But as Kirkman explained, publishers' concerns about "The Walking Dead" were reasonable. Throwing aliens into the mixture would be scary, we all agree today, but in the early 2000s it was not obvious at all.