At the time of its release, The Walking Dead #100 felt like a huge milestone for Robert Kirkman’s creator-owned, black-and-white zombie comic. In retrospect, it was mid-point of the series, which went on to run for another ninety-seven issues. The issue introduced Negan, the franchise’s greatest villain, whose entry into the story featured him committing the seemingly unforgivable sin of killing Glenn, a main character since issue #1.
The Walking Dead thrived with Negan as its primary antagonist. The stories between his arrival in issue #100 and defeat in #126 were among the comic’s most taut and tense. When it came time for the series to move on to a new villain, however, it swerved away from killing off the character, in a reversal of its treatment of previous threats.
Writer Robert Kirkman’s decision to deny his readers – and his characters – the narrative catharsis of Negan’s death made Walking Dead a more morally complex story; it is worth asking, though, whether that was the best creative decision.
Walking Dead Creator Offers Hope for Alternate Timeline Where Glenn Lives
Responding to a fan theory, Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman didn’t definitively rule out the possibility of exploring an alternate timeline.
Rick Grimes Letting Negan Lives Was The Opposite Of Mercy
Sometimes, Dead Is Better
Modern writers love complex villains, but they often struggle writing complex heroes. The contemporary “anti-hero” is often reduced to indulging in vices, or seeking atonement for past actions, in order to signify they are not purely “lawful good,” or morally pristine characters. True complex heroes struggle in their roles as stand-ins for the reader, operating under complicated moral conditions set by the writer, so the reader can judge their own reactions to the characters’ actions. For better or worse, Rick Grimes’ decision to let Negan live, following his defeat, was the result of Robert Kirkman crafting a complex hero.
Negan was introduced to be a crass, vile villain – unhinged from human society, but also a product of it. His actions, from killing Glenn, through his downfall, were unquestionably reprehensible, and often outrageous. Rick’s choice to let Negan live was not a product of some belief in his possibility for redemption; rather, it came from spite, from a desire for Negan to suffer. Most importantly, Rick sought to establish that Negan no longer had power over him, or his people, or anyone. Without a doubt, this presented a fascinating moral conundrum for Walking Dead readers to engage with.
Negan’s Survival Fundamentally Changed The Walking Dead’s Moral System
Negan Became A Central Character
As Rick told a captive Negan on the final page of Walking Dead #126:
“With you out of the way, we’re going to thrive. […] I’m going to make you watch what we become, so that you can see how wrong you were…How much you were holding us back.”
Rick promised Negan he would spend the rest of his days a prisoner, though ultimately, this did not turn out to be the case. Robert Kirkman has named Negan his favorite Walking Dead character, and as a result, the character inevitably grew into one of the series’ protagonists. The early era of his captivity maintained the tension of his prior appearances, portraying him as a predatory threat, scheming to get loose from his cage. By the end of the series, Negan was free, and remarkably, alive.
When Walking Dead suddenly ended its run with issue #194, Negan had not only survived, but achieved at least seem level of redemption, in the estimation of the other characters, if not the audience. Over the course of ninety-four issues, Negan had undeniably become “cool,” and unquestionably made the series more complex. In effect, the creative decision to keep Negan alive changed the entire moral perspective of Walking Dead, shifting it from a story where good guys triumphed over bad guys, to a vision of a world where those standards became increasingly meaningless.
Walking Dead: Negan’s Original Backstory Would Have Made Him Rick’s Perfect Dark Opposite
Robert Kirkman revealed that iconic Walking Dead character Negan almost had a different backstory, tying into scrapped plans for an earlier villain.
Through Walking Dead’s TV Adaptation, Negan’s Survival Had A Ripple Effect
Positive Or Negative, Audiences Will Decide
With storytelling decisions, it’s less a matter of analyzing whether something was “right” or “wrong,” as much as it is worth considering whether the decision was the best possible one for the story. In the case of Negan’s survival, the question is whether it was right to move away from Walking Dead’s more traditional heroes-defeat-villains narrative structure, and toward a more objective depiction of the story’s post-apocalyptic civilization. While characters would still have heroic and villainous moments, the series became increasingly interested in charting how new ethical concerns would arise in a post-zombie world, rather than exploring old ones.
At times, modern audiences mistake gritty, bleak storytelling for complexity – Walking Dead was all of these things, but up until Negan’s survival, it seemed to adhere to a conventional moral register. This was less and less the case as the series progressed, and consequently, the creative team behind the AMC television adaptation of Walking Dead would translate Robert Kirkman’s work to the screen, which would in turn influence many of the current generation of creators across all mediums. In other words, Negan’s arc in The Walking Dead franchise is likely more influential than many people might realize.
Negan’s survival – and Rick Grimes’ morally-weighty rationale behind it – can be argued as having a ripple effect through American storytelling, not unlike the effect Alan Moore’s Watchmen had on the comic book industry in the 1980s, or the films of Martin Scorsese have had on cinema from the 1970s to the present day. It may seem like a grand proclamation, but it is likely that time will prove Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead to have left a defining mark well beyond the zombie genre, and the comic book medium.
