Talking to Entertainment Weekly, Robert Kirkman has revealed more about his and Jay Bonansinga's The Walking Dead: The Road To Woodbury; the follow-up to the excellent The Rise of the Governor. The full interview can be found by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page, but below are some of the main highlights. The novel goes on sale on October 16th and season 3 of The Walking Dead premieres on the 14th.
On How His Collaboration With Co-Author Jay Bonansinga Works:
The easiest way to say it is that I write a skeleton and then he comes in and turns it into a human being. I write a document that’s basically, "Here’s the characters, here’s the journey, here are these events that happen to them." I write a big outline for the novel that lays down the story and then he comes in and miraculously spins it into prose and adds all of the vocabulary that I don’t understand and turns it into a well-rounded novel. Then I go in and pick at that a little bit and we’re off to the races.
On The Challenges Of Making 'The Governor' A Sympathetic Character:
One of the things that interests me the most about the Walking Dead is that we here in this world read these stories and we go, "Okay, this person’s evil, this person is doing bad things, this person is clearly a villain." But when you try to empathize with what these people are living for, what they’re going through, and how their world view is changing… look, many of the things that the Governor does are indefensible and basically evil. But, for the most part, the majority of the decisions he’s making and the actions he’s taking are the kind of things that you would have to do to be a leader in this world. That’s a little terrifying and it’s supposed to be a little uncomfortable but, you know, there’s definitely a lot of grey areas going on in this guy’s life.
On Whether He Always Wanted To Delve Further Into The Back Story Of 'The Governor':
Well, I don’t want to reveal the twist in the first novel — but that is a somewhat new revelation. There were little snippets and little notes that I kept in mind when I was writing the comic book that I am expanding and twisting and turning as we work on this novel series. I’m very meticulous in working with Jay that every single thing which happens in this novel series is completely canon and dovetails into what you already know in the comic books perfectly. But, yeah, there is some actual writing going on! I’m not just going off of notes I wrote 10 years ago.
On Plans For A THIRD Novel In The Series:
Yeah. I don’t want to reveal it, but I’m pretty excited about the third one because the plot’s gonna… Ah, I’ll go ahead and say it: The second novel progresses the Governor’s timeline a lot more and is getting you closer and closer to the events that occurred in the comic book series. And so some of the events in the comic book series are actually going to appear in the third novel. The third novel is going to be a whole new story but you’re actually going to get to see Rick Grimes and Michonne and some of the other characters, which you haven’t seen in the novel series thus far. So I’m pretty excited about the third novel. But I’m not as excited about that as I am the second novel, which everyone should rush out and buy!