With works like The Walking Dead and Invincible to his name, Robert Kirkman is one of the most successful comic book creators of all time. Recently, the superstar writer revealed that both works have an unofficial soundtrack via the music he listened to while writing them.
Kirkman mentions his musical inspirations in the letters page to The Walking Dead Deluxe #61, the ongoing series that ‘remasters’ the original black-and-white comics in full color, courtesy of Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Dave McCaig. In a response to a fan letter asking about music, Kirkman lets slip what he was listening to when writing The Walking Dead: “It might be interesting to know that for the 16 years I wrote the series I listened to a lot of The Dirty Three and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.” Kirkman goes to on describe how he “used to write with music playing all the time… I would use music to help me jump from Walking Dead to Invincible, which I sometimes had to write scenes for in the same day.”
Nick Cave Is at the Heart of The Walking Dead
It’s interesting to learn Kirkman’s own personal soundtrack while writing The Walking Dead, but hardly surprising. The post-apocalyptic zombie comic pairs well with the Gothic rock stylings of the Aussie bands Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and The Dirty Three. The sound-scapes of both bands put the listener in mind of a haunted world that’s moved on, and it’s hard not to conjure images of Rick, Carl, Michonne and the rest of the cast roaming the zombie-infested wasteland while listening to tracks like “Red Right Hand” or “Sue’s Last Ride.” Nick Cave is actually no stranger to comics himself, as the accomplished writer and musician was the subject of the 2017 graphic novel Nick Cave: Mercy on Me by Reinhard Kleist.
Presidents of the United States Helped Kirkman Transition to Invincible
Equally interesting is Kirkman’s revelation that he would use music to help change gears when he had to jump from a Walking Dead script to Invincible. Kirkman states, “So, I’d go from The Dirty Three to The Presidents of the United States or something… because while Invincible is actually a more violent comic… it was always more of a FUN comic.” It’s something that most fans probably wouldn’t give a second thought, but it does make absolute sense when looking at the bubblegum pop superhero world of Invincible and contrasting it with the stark, grim reality the characters face in each issue of The Walking Dead – Kirkman would absolutely need a way to transition out of one world and into another when writing the scripts for both.
Kirkman goes on to state that it might be interesting for readers to play those artists’ works when reading The Walking Dead or Invincible – an awesome secret tip for getting even more out of the series.
