Robert Kirkman never thought The Walking Dead TV adaptation would actually feature Shiva on the show. You know Shiva, right? Ezekiel’s pet TIGER.
Yeah, that’s right. The Walking Dead featured a CGI tiger in its show. No one really thought the TV series would even think about bringing Shiva into Ezekiel’s storyline. The tiger isn’t crucial to Ezekiel’s story and could’ve been edited out all together. But no, the show embraced Shiva and subsequently let Kirkman have more freedom in his comic books.
Kirkman spoke about how the show changed the way he decided to write the comics during a panel at Emerald City Comicon ( via ComicBook.com).
“A lot of the things that are adapted into the show now are things that happened to come in after the existence of the show, and I can’t help but notice that there is some kind of difference,” Kirkman said. “Now you’ve got Ezekiel walking around, acting like a lunatic. Negan’s walking around — in the comic, he’s dropping the f-word every two seconds, and that’s something you can’t do on the show. We’ve got a freakin’ tiger that’s in the show now.”
Kirkman added, “That was clearly me going, ‘They’re never going to get to this stuff, and if they do get to this stuff, they’re never going to be able to adapt it, so I’m just going hog wild. I had to prove to myself internally that I was not changing what I was planning to do with a mind towards how we were going to adapt it when we got there on the show. I went so overboard that I think it did change in the comic in some way — but I feel like it made it more awesome.”
There’s more ridiculousness to come in The Walking Dead TV series if it continues to pick up comic storylines. More specifically, people wearing walker skin and Carl having adult relationships. We want to avoid spoilers here if you’re not caught up in the comics, but rebuilding society is hard work. Rick can’t be keeping an eye on Carl every second of the day, let alone have a moment to give him “The Talk.”
But we digress. If you haven’t picked up The Walking Dead comics, you’re definitely missing out. It’s less cringy than the show at the moment since they don’t have to deal with CGI budget or TV censorship. Actually, that’s not true. There are definitely moments in the comics that will make you cringe out of the sheer brutality of it all. You can order copies of The Walking Dead comics here.
Catch The Walking Dead Season 7 on Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.
