The Walking Dead creator finds common comic trope ‘super dull’

Some things tend to happen a lot in comic books, but The Walking Dead’s creator doesn’t care for one common marketing trope.

Comic books are an amazing world where anything can happen. There can be incredible highs and horrific lows in any comic book series. But some things happen too often in comics, and they just end up feeling like a marketing ploy. The creator of The Walking Dead expressed this recently.

In the Cutting Room Floor section of The Walking Dead Deluxe issue 37, Robert Kirkman talked about having to Google Bible passages for the wedding. Still, he didn’t want it to feel like other comics where marriages were big money-making ideas to sell issues.

Kirkman didn’t mince words when discussing how he saw weddings in some of the most extensive comic book series ever created.

"‘”The Wedding of” issues are always highly publicized, sell extremely well…and are susuper dull. So any wedding I’ve done in a comic has taken up about two pages MAX.”"

He then offered advice to other comic creators to do their artists a favor and keep their weddings short. He added that his marriage ceremonies were always very short, with one page for Invincible‘s matrimonial bliss.

The Walking Dead: Is Robert Kirkman right about comic weddings?

Unless a wedding is building to a massive conflict that happens immediately at the ceremony, long, drawn-out issues with a ton of different angles and guests that add nothing to the story really is a waste of time in terms of storytelling.

No matter how good the artwork is or how emotional the different panels might be intended to be, there are ways to share those feelings without devoting an entire issue to documenting everything from the event.

There is a reason The Walking Dead comics are so successful. They trim a lot of the fat from stories and focus on relationships between people and conflicts to keep the story moving along. Hopefully, more comic creators will take this approach in the future.