The Walking Dead's Success Proves Its Creator's Original Zombie Story Should Be Greenlit ASAP

Coming from Image Comics, The Walking Dead was one of the most successful zombie comics ever made and helped revitalize the genre, even spawning several different successful TV shows. But that's after Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore altered their pitch after Image rejected their original idea, and if they had stuck with their original pitch, The Walking Dead's legacy would be very different.

Originally, writer Kirkman intended for the series to focus on a zombie apocalypse that destroys the world, but that apocalypse would've taken place over decades, and the world in question would have been very different. Instead of a modern day Earth, the story was meant to take place on a futuristic utopian version of Earth.

In Kirkman's original pitch, while exploring outer space, the government discovers a strange mineral that transforms people into zombies. As the government often does, their first idea was to use this as a potential weapon of war. They intended to use the mineral in bombs, allowing them to make anyone not killed by the initial blast into zombies.

The Walking Dead Almost Went In a Completely Different Direction, Embracing More Science Fiction

The Series Would Be Unrecognizable To Fans Today

The government's idea didn't go according to plan though, as few things do in zombie media. The mineral would instead end up infecting a good portion of society, with citizens transforming into ravenous zombies that attack the utopia. The comic would then showcase the fall of this utopia over several decades. Each story arc would be set in a different time period and focus on a different group of characters. One of Kirkman's brilliant ideas was that each arc would be entirely self-contained, meaning someone could pick up any time period and read it from start to finish to get a full story.

The Walking Dead, as fans know it today, starts like most zombie media does: with a zombie apocalypse that wipes out the majority of humanity. This apocalypse is swift and brutal. One of the major reasons the "walkers" in this universe are so dangerous is because everyone is infected. It doesn't matter how someone dies, as long as their brain is intact at the time of death, they will reanimate as a walker. It was a brilliant way to explain how the world was destroyed so quickly and utterly.

After the apocalypse, the story follows a group of survivors led by Rick Grimes as they try to find safety from both the walkers and from other humans. The story takes them all over America, and they meet a host of characters and lose a ton of friends along the way. One of the things that made The Walking Dead stand out was the brutal deaths that the series was infamous for. While the story was certainly entertaining, it wasn't the first idea that Kirkman had for his zombie magnum opus.

Kirkman's Original Idea for The Walking Dead Was Fascinating

Fans Can Hope That He'll Return to It Some Day

Unfortunately for everyone, as cool as Kirkman's original idea sounds, Image just wasn't interested. The comic premise was rejected and Kirkman was sent back to the drawing board. Unwilling to give up on the idea of his zombie epic, he retooled it into the story that readers are now familiar with. But the original idea still has plenty of things about, and it could still work if it was revitalized. One of the most fascinating aspects of zombie media that is rarely explored, which Kirkman seems to agree with, is what happens after the zombie apocalypse.

Most zombie media just focuses on the immediate end of the world. Often, the zombies just show up one day and obliterate everything before anyone can react. The original idea for The Walking Dead was to show a slow fall into chaos, and ultimately how society would prevail against the zombie threat. It's a great idea, and it's unfortunate that Image wasn't onboard with it. While The Walking Dead is a fantastic comic series as is, it's not exactly as genre-pushing as Kirkman's original plans.