The Walking Dead Comics' Ending Won't Be Spoiled By the TV Show

While Game of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin had some advice for survivors on The Walking Dead recently, there are still some areas where he might be able to learn from Robert Kirkman's zombie survival drama.

Like, for instance, how to deal with the reality that novels and comic books can run indefinitely, while the budgetary restrictions of TV mean most TV series cannot.

When producers recently acknowledged that the Game of Thrones TV series will spoil the as-yet-unfinished novel series on which it's based, we remembered that Robert Kirkman once daid that can't happen on AMC's The Walking Dead.

"I think it would be impossible for any way that the show would end to spoil the comic. I that think they are both very separate," Kirkman told ComicBook.com when we asked him about this very issue at 2012's New York Comic Con. "I have certain endings in mind for the comic book. I have different events that I want to get to and if I haven't gotten to them yet when the show is wrapping up I'm just not going to tell anyone in the writers' room what my idea is for how I would wrap up the comic book. If they come up with anything similar, I'll be like, 'I don't like that, let's not do that,' and try to steer them away from it. So I think it'll be pretty easy to keep them separate but that is something that has occurred to me, that I have thought about."

The Walking Dead, from Image Comics' Skybound imprint, is nearing 150 issues and is several storylines ahead of the TV series, as well as a five-year time jump that could provide some minor logistical problems to do on TV. The TV series on which it's based, which will wrap its fifth season this weekend, is loosely adapting a storyline that took place between issues 73 and 77 or so.

The season finale of The Walking Dead airs Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC.