How Robert Kirkman Turned A $40,000 Debt Into A Thriving Media Empire
In the early 2000s, Robert Kirkman spent many sleepless nights wondering if he’d ever achieve his comic-book dreams — or whether he’d buried himself under so much debt that he’d never crawl out from under it. Amazingly, though, he turned those maxed out credit cards and comics which refused to sell into a thriving media empire built on one of the biggest horror franchises of the modern era. This is the rags-to-riches story of the man who created The Walking Dead and Invincible!
Kirkman wanted to be a writer-artist
Like many young comic-book fanatics, Kirkman grew up imagining how awesome it would be to create his own fantastic tales. He didn’t always want to be a writer, though — in 2013 he told Rolling Stone, “My dream was to write and draw my own comics.”
He explained, “My favorite books were written and drawn by writer-artists — guys that did the whole thing themselves.” Unfortunately, when he tried to make beautiful pictures like Frank Miller or Todd McFarlane, reality came crashing in!
He wasn’t exactly a model student
He chuckled, “When I grew up and realized I was a terrible artist and was not good enough to actually do that, I was a little upset.” During his high-school years, Kirkman had been an art student — but when he had this awful realization, he went off the rails a bit.
He confessed, “My last year of high school, I didn’t do anything…I would tell my English teacher, ‘I’m going to go work on my art project.’ Then I’d leave and go hang out and eat at Long John Silver’s.”
Seeing his work in print was a dream come true
Luckily, the young Kirkman had an epiphany. He explained, “I realized that the writing part is more fun, and, you know, less time-consuming!” He began writing his own comics and collaborating with artists to bring them to life, and for three or four years, simply seeing his ideas in print was like a dream come true.
In 2012 he told Writer’s Digest, “I used to joke that the main thing I write for is the charge of getting your work back — seeing the work and being able to hold it in your hands.”
And he still feels that way to this day
Kirkman reminisced, “When I used to get my preview copies back from the printer, I would tear the box open and flip through the comic and check the printing to make sure it turned out okay. Really, just being able to hold it in your hands and feel that sense of accomplishment was the charge for doing more work.”
Amazingly, even though he’d become hugely successful by the time of this Writer’s Digest interview, he insisted, “I still get it to this day when I get my comics in the mail.”
Racking up debt
Though it was fulfilling to get his ideas down on paper and onto store shelves, these early years of independent comic making didn’t exactly pay Kirkman’s bills. He admitted, “Most of everything that I did, I did for free or to get further in debt for the first three or four years of writing.”
By the time Kirkman did start doing well enough to actually make money in his chosen field, he was already in a deep financial hole. In fact, when he crunched the numbers, it sent a chill up his spine.
An unsustainable publishing model
“By the time I started making money, I was, like, $40,000 in debt and making $200 a year,” confessed Kirkman. “I had a publishing company, so I’d make a comic, and that comic would cost $3,000 to manufacture. But I had pre-sold it, and I was going to make, like, $3,500 for it.”
He continued, “I would pay for the printing on a credit card, get the $3,500, take the $500, which is technically profits, for the people that worked on it, then live off of the $3,000 that I put on a credit card.”
“Yeah, this is really bad”
Of course, this wasn’t a sustainable business model, and Kirkman could only bury his head in the sand for so long. He admitted, “I ended up doing the math. At one point I had 12 credit cards, and it was like $3,000 a month just to pay the minimum payments. I was like, ‘Yeah, this is really bad.’”
Most people at this point would have let fear take over, wondering if they’d doomed themselves to financial ruin to follow a dream which was never going to pay off with a career.
He would lay on the floor and shake from fear
Indeed, Kirkman admitted during an appearance on the WTF podcast that he did occasionally let the fear in. He revealed, “I don’t talk about this a lot, but I would lay on the floor and shake.” He even began lying to his parents so they wouldn’t worry about him.
At one point, he lost one of the two jobs he was working — at a lightbulb factory and in a comic-book store — and when his mom found out, he told her he’d gotten a job with UPS instead. He mused, “I didn’t want them telling me what not to do.”
“If it’s important, you have to make time”
Luckily for comics and TV fans, though, Kirkman isn’t like most people. He was certain he would achieve his dreams in the end, even if it meant going through some hard times. He told Writer’s Digest that, in those early days, it was tough to even carve out the time to write.
Still, he believed, “If it’s important, you have to make time to do it. It’s a tough thing. When I was first starting out, I had a day job — and for a while two day jobs — so I was working 55 hours a week.”
Push through the hard times to get to the good times
Kirkman then gave his advice for aspiring creators, saying, “I always felt like if I had a really… [bad] two or three years, but they led to a good life, that they're totally worth it. I would recommend having that two years of Hell — really pushing yourself to the limit.”
He was, of course, purely talking about working hard, though — not plunging yourself into debt! In that regard, he told WTF, “I’m glad it worked out; [but] if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t do it.”
Battle Pope
Okay, so now we know Kirkman dug himself into a big ol’ debt hole while self-publishing comics in his early years, but which titles are we talking about here? Well, the first series he ever published was 2000’s Battle Pope, and it was a collaboration with artist Tony Moore.
It told the wildly violent, insanely hilarious tale of a gun-toting Pope bestowed with superpowers by God and tasked with fighting all the demons and sinners left on Earth after the Almighty called all the good people up to Heaven.
It still holds a dear place in his heart
In 2008 Kirkman told CBR that Battle Pope “was the beginning of my career in comics and despite being slightly controversial, it holds a very dear place in my heart.” In truth, though, any controversy — which Kirkman admits was mild — didn’t so much come from the murderous Pope character.
Instead, it was more likely focused on his sidekick Jesus H. Christ — portrayed as a trusting layabout who spent most of his days munching junk food and playing video games!
Any controversy disappeared once people actually read the comic
Kirkman chuckled, “I do portray Jesus as being very naïve, but that's just a take on how he was portrayed to me in Sunday school — unconditional love, helping your enemies, turn the other cheek. That sounds to me like a naïve guy who could be taken advantage of.”
He added, “Once people actually read the book and see that it's not a malicious attack on religion, and rather, just a satire with cool superhero-type action, they don't seem too [angry]. I’ve barely gotten five hate letters since I started Battle Pope!”
Finding a home at Image Comics
While Battle Pope wasn’t a mega-seller, it did land Kirkman on the radar of Image Comics, the premier creator-owned comics publisher in America. He teamed up with artist Cory Walker on SuperPatriot: a series based on a character created by Erik Larsen, one of Image’s founders.
Kirkman then wrote Tech Jacket, a six-issue series about a teen boy who gains superpowers from a technically advanced vest given to him by a dying alien. Neither series sold gangbusters, but Kirkman’s true breakthrough was just around the corner.
Science Dog is a no-go
Kirkman and Walker enjoyed working together on SuperPatriot so much that when it finished they began the process of pitching an original creation to Image. Their big idea was a dog who would solve crimes, and they wanted to call it Science Dog — but, perhaps unsurprisingly, Image didn’t bite!
Kirkman told Mashable, “They were like, ‘Nobody really likes talking dogs. We really like you guys — can you please give us a book that does not have a talking dog as its main character?’”
An opportunity presents itself
At that time, Jim Valentino — another of Image’s founders — had a brainwave. The American comic-book industry has always run on superhero comics, but Image had mostly steered clear of that arena as it wanted to offer an alternative to what the likes of Marvel and D.C. published.
Valentino, though, felt there was space for some new, original superhero comics, and he planned to release five titles under one new publishing imprint. With Science Dog floundering, he gave Kirkman and Walker the chance to pitch their own hero.
Everything they loved about superheroes
So, Kirkman and Walker began throwing some ideas around. Kirkman had always been a big fan of teenage superheroes like Spider-Man — but he felt there weren’t as many young heroes on shelves in 2003 as there should have been.
Once they decided their hero would be in that age range, it was a case of, “Cory and I spitballing and coming up with things we loved about superhero comics and crafting a book that could be everything that we love about superheroes all crammed into one book.”
The pitch was initially pretty generic
Kirkman began crafting the pitch for a series they would dub Invincible, but somewhere along the way, he realized the story was fairly generic. He knew the hero would be Mark Grayson, a teen waiting for his superpowers to develop so he could be like his dad — the world’s greatest superhero, Omni-Man.
It felt like the logical story saw Mark and his father saving the world as a superhero father-and-son duo once his powers finally manifested. But then Kirkman came up with a curveball.
Until Kirkman came up with the Omni-Man twist
What if Omni-Man wasn’t a superhero at all? What if he brutally murdered the Guardians of the Globe — the Justice League-esque superteam he’d led for years? What if he had been a sleeper agent for villainous alien species the Viltrumites all along, and by killing his fellow heroes, he was clearing the path for an invasion of Earth?
In this version of the story, Mark would be forced to fight his own father with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, unsure if his dad had ever truly loved him.
The best decision of his young comics career
Kirkman admitted to Mashable, “It was something I was initially going to keep secret from everyone just because I thought it'd be funny to surprise people, but I ended up putting it in the pitch.” In the end, that proved the best decision he had made up to that point in his young comics career.
Omni-Man’s villainous turn didn’t happen until issue #7, and sales looked to be dictating that the series wouldn’t be long for this world. But then the enormous twist grabbed readers by their collective throats.
Invincible hovered close to cancellation
“Our sales kind of cratered pretty quickly,” admitted Kirkman to SKTCHD, “and the book was coming out in a somewhat erratic schedule… Our sales dwindled to the 4,000 to 5,000 range, which is not great. That’s usually cancellation level, especially back then at Image.”
Kirkman made a deal with the publisher that they’d give him until #13 to wrap up the story, though, because at that point they weren’t yet losing money on the series — they just weren’t making any either!
Hey, this book might last
Walker departed the series with #8, and was replaced by artist Ryan Ottley, who expected to be out of a job in six issues. But then the sales of #11 “crept up by 100 copies or 150 copies.” Then #12 “jumped up by 500 copies, and issue #13 jumped up by 1,000 copies.”
The audience was slowly expanding, no doubt driven by the Omni-Man twist. By the time the book was selling 20,000 per issue Kirkman finally started to think, “Hey, this book might last.”
The Walking Dead shambles onto the scene
Not long after Invincible debuted, Kirkman launched another series — one that would change his life forever. Yet when he originally pitched The Walking Dead, it was almost killed before it even had a chance to walk.
At a Comic-Con panel in 2018 Kirkman revealed Image had told him, “There…[are] no successful zombie books in this industry and you need to have a hook. Your book needs to be about something. You can’t just do a book about the zombie apocalypse and people are surviving.”
The lie everything was built on
Kirkman had to think on his feet — after all, he did actually plan for The Walking Dead to simply be about people surviving in a zombie apocalypse! So, he quickly came up with something which would wow the decision-makers.
He told them, “Oh, we got that — there's an alien invasion and the aliens are just using the zombies to weaken the world’s infrastructure and move in.” The editor said, “That sounds cool!” and the book was approved. But Kirkman had been lying through his teeth!
The truth comes out — but Image didn’t care any more
By the time Image found out Kirkman had pulled the wool over their eyes, #1 had already debuted to impressive sales. He revealed, “The first issue saw print, came out, was in stores, and it really did kind of catch on right off the bat, which was new for me.”
When the editors asked him if he’d laid any hints in #1 to the hidden alien plot, he copped that he made the whole thing up on the spot! He chuckled, “By then the book was successful, so they were thrilled!”
What happens after the credits roll in zombie movies?
The thing that had always intrigued Kirkman most about zombie stories was how they always focused on a fairly short moment in time. He once told Yahoo, “I just noticed that none of them ever really continue long-term and watch where people go for years and years and years.”
He continued, “They always destroy the world, and then they go, ‘Well, let’s see a couple weeks of it and never see this again.’” To him, though, the real story was what happened to the survivors after the credits rolled — and this birthed The Walking Dead.
Becoming a partner at Image
Buoyed by the runaway success of The Walking Dead and Invincible, in 2008 Kirkman was made a partner at Image — the first new one the company had appointed since its inception in 1992. In a press release, he said, “Image Comics has been a huge part of my life for as long as it’s been in existence.”
He continued, “Having the chance to help run the company — as well as continue to contribute strong creator-owned series to its publishing line — is more than I’ve ever thought possible for myself.”
Hollywood was fairy dust to Kirkman
So in eight short years, Kirkman had gone from self-publishing to being made partner at the publisher he grew up loving, but this would only be the start of his rise. In the mid-2000s, Hollywood began sniffing around his work, a development which in his eyes had always seemed a million miles away.
He told Rolling Stone, “There had been some interest in a few of the comics that I’d done before, but I was in Kentucky: the whole concept of the movie and TV industry was all fairydust to me.”
Who’s Frank Darabont?
In fact, Kirkman admitted, “When somebody told me [director] Frank Darabont was interested in doing The Walking Dead as a TV show, I was like, ‘Um, who’s Frank Darabont? What’s The Shawshank Redemption? Never heard of it.’”
As bizarre as that sounds, Kirkman was telling the truth. When he finally rented the movie, he thought, “Oh, he gets it. This isn’t about the prison — it’s about these two guys and their emotions. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
The Walking Dead becomes a TV empire
AMC’s The Walking Dead wound up debuting on Halloween night in 2010; it quickly became a success beyond Kirkman’s wildest dreams. It ran for 11 seasons and 177 episodes, and spawned an unprecedented six spin-off shows.
The first spin-off — Fear the Walking Dead — lasted an incredible eight seasons and 113 episodes, while subsequent ones have had shorter runs. As of 2024, there are three active shows: The Walking Dead: Dead City, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.
The comic ends, to the shock of fans everywhere
The Walking Dead’s television empire has even outlasted its source material. Kirkman wrapped up the comic book in 2019 with #193. That had come as a complete surprise to fans — there had been no prior announcement.
During an appearance on the Fatman Beyond podcast, Kirkman explained, “I thought it would be a real fun thing to have people reading the final issues and not being aware of the fact that they're reading the final issues.”
Invincible had also wrapped up the year before
“It turned the end of the series into a surprise death,” continued Kirkman, “which is — I think — very fitting because the whole thing is based on surprise deaths and dealing with this loss, and how unexpected and rapid it can come.”
In truth, this was actually the second ending Kirkman’s fans had dealt with in less than two years; in February 2018 Invincible had also finished after an incredible 144-issue run. Grayson and his ultra-violent, ultra-emotional adventures wouldn’t be gone for long, though.
Invincible heads to Prime Video
You see, on March 25, 2021, an Invincible animated series hit the Amazon Prime Video streaming service. Its cast was star-studded, with The Walking Dead’s Steven Yuen voicing Mark, and J.K. Simmons providing the commanding tones of Omni-Man.
Other stars lending their vocal talents included Sandra Oh, Walton Goggins, Seth Rogen, Mahershala Ali, Sterling K. Brown, and Zazie Beetz. The series received strong reviews and fans took it into their hearts, and in 2023 a second season took the show to even greater heights.
Skybound Entertainment
These days, Kirkman has his fingers in many pies. He co-founded Skybound Entertainment in 2010 to oversee adaptations of his work, as well as create new properties for comics, film, television, and video games.
In 2023 Kirkman told GamesBeat that he feels he was lucky to get into Hollywood at a time when the industry began taking comic books seriously, and he believes the same thing is happening with video games. He also revealed he applies lessons learned from The Walking Dead to everything Skybound develops.
Unlike anything else on TV
For example, Kirkman always tries “to provide the audience with something different, something new, something that they’re not expecting. That’s the thing that led to the success of The Walking Dead — whether it was the shocking character deaths, or the simple fact that it was zombie mythology being treated like it was a serious drama.”
He added, “There were a lot of elements to The Walking Dead that were unexpected and provided a unique experience — a vastly different experience — than they were getting anywhere else on television.”
Something new and unexpected
“When I’m working on something like Invincible, or the movie Renfield, or our various video game projects, I’m always trying to find the angle to them where there’s some kind of different element,” continued Kirkman.
As an example, he noted how, “Invincible is a superhero story that is appealing to an audience that’s familiar with superhero stories, but it has horror-movie violence. It’s a long-form character drama in a way that you haven’t really seen in other superhero TV shows or movies.”
He still loves comics
Despite his job description expanding over the past decade to include so many other things, Kirkman has still found time to write comics. In 2014 he launched exorcism drama Outcast; in 2018 it was sci-fi action series Oblivion Song; and Fire Power and Void Rivals launched in 2020 and 2023 respectively.
He clearly still loves comics, although his continued work in the industry hasn’t always been plain sailing. In fact, legal proceedings have been initiated against him by two of his former collaborators.
Sued by an artistic collaborator and childhood friend
In 2012 Kirkman was sued by Tony Moore, his childhood pal and original artist of Battle Pope and The Walking Dead. Moore claimed Kirkman had reneged on a deal to give him 60 percent of “comic publishing net proceeds” and 20 percent of “motion picture net proceeds” on TWD.
Kirkman responded, “The lawsuit is ridiculous… He is violating the same contract he initiated and approved, and he wants to misrepresent the fees he was paid and continues to be paid for the work he was hired to do.”
Relationships can be hurt when money is involved
This painful suit was settled out of court, as was another one initiated by Invincible colorist William Crabtree. He claimed Kirkman had “tricked” him into signing away rights he had as a co-creator of the series, on top of breaking a verbal agreement to pay him 10 percent of revenue from any TV/film adaptations.
While both suits are now settled, they are sad reminders of how friendships can often fall by the wayside when money is involved, especially when one party has subsequently created a burgeoning entertainment empire!