Warning! Contains minor Walking Dead and Invincible spoilers!
Robert Kirkman, the creative mind behind The Walking Dead and Invincible has a writing trick that he relies on so much, he wound up using it in both series.
Both The Walking Dead and Invincible are known for their engaging plots, rich characters and dramatic, long-form storytelling. They're also infamous for their shocking and heartbreaking moments. The Walking Dead tells the story of a zombie apocalypse and the struggles of a survivor group trying to stay alive while Invincible follows a teenager who discovers the bloody reality of heroism after following in his father's footsteps. When writing Invincible and The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman made sure to find the right balance of slower, more personal moments and notable, high-stakes reveals.
Kirkman even admitted to a trick he routinely uses to help him get the biggest payoffs in his writing. In The Walking Dead Deluxe #42 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard, Kirkman writes in the commentary “Oh, it’s just another one of those quiet aftermath issues where we check in on all the characters and see what’s going on in their lives, an AAAAAHHHHH look on that last page. Oh, dear… is this my one gag? This is basically the same structure of the INVINCIBLE series pilot I wrote and almost every other thing I’ve done at some point.". The issue does feature a dramatic last-page reveal where the sinister Governor has prepared an attack to kill Rick Grimes and his associates. The pilot Kirkman acknowledges to seems to reference the final scene in which Omni-Man graphically murders the Guardians of the Globe, a scene that served as the shocking final page to Invincible #7.
To be fair to Robert Kirkman, the reveals on the last page of an issue create an incentive for a fan to come back for the next issue. Cliffhanger endings in comics are a time-honored tradition and Kirkman certainly isn’t a hack for indulging in the oldest storytelling convention in the book. But it's interesting that Kirkman recognized how frequently the trope appeared in his own writing, showing that he has an awareness of what made both his series work so effectively.
Writing compelling stories isn't always easy and its even more difficult to look at one's own work with a critical eye. The process is different for everyone and there’s no real right or wrong way to create fiction. Robert Kirkman’s use of an epic reveal after a calm moment helped The Walking Dead and Invincible have powerful endings that left readers in suspense and ensured that they would be coming back for more. Is it a cheap trick? Debatable. Is it effective? Absolutely. While Robert Kirkman might have a misgiving or two about his overuse of the trope, his favorite writing trick helped give fans of Invincible and The Walking Dead scenes they'd never forget.
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