The Walking Dead is a post-apocalyptic comic series chock-full of gory zombie action and deeply layered character moments, with the series creator recently revealing a prequel focusing on the friend-turned-villain, Shane, could potentially become a brand new graphic novel sometime in the future!
A Walking Dead character that ultimately became an antagonist Rick Grimes, Shane, after Rick is left in a coma and the undead overrun the world, brings Rick’s wife, Lori, and young son, Carl, to Atlanta to keep them safe (and keep his affair with Lori going), never once imagining his ex-police partner and best friend would escape his dire predicament and find them.
And while Robert Kirkman has allowed a few extra pieces of “spinoff” content to branch out from the main series — most notably The Walking Dead: The Alien one-shot, the multiple novels focusing on the character of The Governor, and the “Here’s Negan” collection of stories — getting a potential prequel with Shane at the center of it is a fantastic way to continue to flesh out the less than honorable characters The Walking Dead is so good at creating.
The Walking Dead Prequel Series Would Follow Shane, Lori, and Carl
An idea revealed in The Walking Dead Deluxe #62 by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Dave McCaig, Kirkman spills the details of a possible prequel story after a particularly cheeky fan letter gets him thinking about why he doesn’t do more spinoffs and tie-ins for his always-popular zombie epic. Saying he has considered doing a spinoff story on more than one occasion, Kirkman elaborates by admitting, “There is an original graphic novel I actually started writing that would be THE WALKING DEAD Volume 0. It would take place before volume one and be about Lori, Shane, and Carl getting to Atlanta.” Going on to say, “There are some interesting moments in that time that I thought might be good to show,” Kirkman immediately gives rise to hundreds of fan theories about what may or may not come to pass in this hopeful prequel comic.
Set in the time between the fall of civilization and the arrival of Rick at the survivor camp outside of Atlanta — as seen at the beginning of The Walking Dead comic — the idea of exploring the tension, uncertainty, chaos, and fear surrounding the earliest days of the zombie apocalypse is a solid one, with the exact moment Shane and Lori decide to leave Rick behind at the hospital being one such potential narrative highlight Kirkman could pursue. Not only that, but getting a better perspective of, better motivation for, and more time with Shane as a character is an infinitely good thing, as it’s something fans weren’t given much of, considering Kirkman ended up killing Shane in issue six of the series thinking he wouldn’t have a comic that would last seven chapters, let alone its eventual 193.
And although Robert Kirkman, unfortunately, closes out all this exciting prequel talk by confirming that, in the end, he shelved the project, he gives fans one tiny glimmer of hope with a final comment of, “…but I might do that someday,” ensuring that if Shane ever got a new story set in the world of The Walking Dead, it would be penned by the man who started it all!