The Walking Dead Artist Comments on Series Ending

The Walking Dead is over. The comic series which is more than 15-years-old printed its last issue which went on shelves on Wednesday. The “never ending” zombie series has ended. It came as a shock for fans invested in the long-running franchise as series creator Robert Kirkman elected to kill the series with no announcement of its end nearing. He simply let the book go out to retailers in an effort to allow readers to learn it was over simply by reading the final panels. Now, the longest-running artist on the series Charlie Adlard has commented on its conclusion.

“Yep, it’s now official,” Adlard said in a tweet. “That’s it… the end! What can I say? Thank you everyone for coming with us on this epic journey. Robert Kirkman changed my life when he suggest we work on this ‘little zombie comic’ all those years ago. Love you all!”

Check out the tweet from Adlard, who joined The Walking Dead books in their seventh issue, below.

“Way back in early 2015, Charlie Adlard turned in the cover for issue #142,” Kirkman wrote in the back pages of issue #193. “He had taken my direction, of showing happy people at the Alexandria fair, the booths, the commerce… a very civilized scene, and he’d worked wonders with the concept. It was a cover unlike anything that had come before. To me, it was a real turning point for this series.”

“The thing is… this was over four years ago at this point… but I knew pretty much every big story point that was going to happen all the way up to this final issue. A couple years prior, around 2013 or so, I’d even told Charlie at San Diego Comic-Con what the gist of this final issue was…I just didn’t know exactly what issue that story would fall in. I knew the end… but I didn’t know where it would fall. I figured… somewhere past issue #300. As I’ve said publicly… I’ve always wanted to reach that number, that big, round Cerebus number that all the insane indy comics creators try to chase.”

What did you think of the ending of The Walking Dead comics? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram and Twitter.

The Walking Dead issue #193 is available in comic shops now.