Robert Kirkman (Invincible, Oblivion Song), the creator of The Walking Dead, has announced that the comic book series which inspired the hit AMC drama is coming back to life, The Hollywood Reporter affirms. News of this release arrives approximately one year after the first installment of The Walking Dead comic series ended, and following the recent news of AMC possibly airing the television series’ 10th season finale.
The Walking Dead’s 10th season finale titled A Certain Doom, was set to premiere on April 12, 2020. Yet, the series was one of many to fall to COVID-19 quarantine implementations. Now that production has resumed in Los Angeles County, A Certain Doom is back in the works.
Negan Lives #1, the new sequel to the zombie apocalyptic comic. This 36-page one shot special centers “on the titular baseball-bat wielding antihero, played in the AMC television adaptation by Jeffrey Dean Morgan,” The Hollywood Reporter asserts.
Helming from Skybound Entertainment and Image Comics, Negan Lives #1 will land in comic shops on July 1, and only in comic shops. With no current intentions on releasing the comic digitally, The Hollywood Reporter confirms that Negan Lives #1 will be a comic book store exclusive.
Kirkman’s decision to not release Negan Lives #1 digitally was inspired “by Steve Geppi and Diamond’s efforts to shine a light on how essential the Direct Market is to our beloved industry with their #backthecomeback campaign,” he said on The Hollywood Reporter. “While Charlie Adlard and I had laid the series to rest, this felt like something special we could do for the store owners who made our series a success to begin with,” Kirkman mentioned.
In junction with this humbling endeavor, Kirkman claims that “100% of the revenue generated from this book will go to the stores selling it. The retailer community does backbreaking work to get comics into the hands of our loving fans, we should all be doing more in these trying times to show how appreciated they are.”
Arriving on the same day as Negan Lives #1 is Kirkamn’s and co-creator Chris Samnee’s (Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Daredevil) new comic book endeavor Fire Power; Vol. 1: Prelude, which follows Owen Johnson’s journey in possibly becoming the first person in a thousand years to wield the lost art of the Fire Power from a Shaolin Temple.