In an interview with MTV Splash Page, Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga have talked revealingly about the release of The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor, a novel which explores the back story of the iconic villain, revealing how he came to be. There's also an excerpt from the audiobook version which is now on sale in the US and set to be released in the UK soon.
Robert Kirkman:
"A lot of people have a misconception about me because I'm the 'Walking Dead' guy, and they're like, 'Oh, that guy love violence and he's just crazy. Half the time, I'm cringing as I type my script, which is very rudimentary like, 'This guy gets his stomach turned open' or 'This happens to this guy.' Sometimes when I get the pages back from Charlie, I'm like, [Screams in disgust] 'Oh, come on this is killing me!'"
"Moving into the 'Walking Dead' TV show, one of the things that I'm really uncomfortable with is being on set and seeing Greg Nicotero and the guys at KNB work their magic. I go into their trailer, and it's like, 'Hey, look at this dead body made out of foam, and it looks real, and you can touch its intestine.' That's just way too real for me. I'm constantly like just, 'Oh, it's way worse on the TV show. It's really hard to stomach. This is crazy.'"
"Then to move into the prose world, where this guy is doing his word magic on all of these horrific scenes where I was like, 'This can happen and that needs to do this,' and he's like, 'Oh, well watch this. It's just that much more graphic and much harder to handle for me. It's fun moving from medium to medium and seeing it kind of elevate this stuff to a level that I can't really handle."
Jay Bonansinga:
"I've worked with [George] Romero. People like George and Stephen King, there is a misconception about these folks. I've said it before, there's humanity. It's not porn. It's not like gore porn. There's humanity, and that's how George… he impressed me as one of the sweetest people I've ever met. George, he wouldn't hurt a fly. A wonderful old hippie and a great guy and brilliant. Robert's very analogous to that, a very down-to-earth, good guy. I think that it's the humanity. That's where the violent, horrendous horror comes from. Without the humanity, it is just sort of 'Hostel.'"
And also thanks to the site, we have the following excerpt from the audiobook version of the novel.