Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman once explained the simple reason the zombie-horror comic couldn’t avoid incorporating religion into its story: geography. With the series primarily set in the Southeast United States, Kirkman admitted that it would have “just felt odd” to ignore religion and spirituality entirely, as it would have played a major role in the lives of most of his characters, believers or otherwise.

The Walking Dead Deluxe #94 – a full-color reprint of the original 2012 issue written by Robert Kirkman, with art by Charlie Adlard – contains the comic’s original letters page, which featured the creator’s response to a fan’s comments on religion in the book.

Perhaps surprisingly, the fan expressed concern that Kirkman was pandering to a specifically religious audience, which the author firmly – if politely – dismissed, noting that the location of the series made engaging with characters’ religious beliefs a necessity for the story.

Robert Kirkman: Walking Dead’s Setting Influenced Its Portrayal Of Religion

The Walking Dead Deluxe #94 – Written By Robert Kirkman; Art By Charlie Adlard; Color By Dave McCaig; Lettering By Rus Wooten

[ The Walking Dead’s ] characters had to reflect real world values, and real world belief systems, in order for [Robert] Kirkman to test how these things would hold up in response to an unexpected, civilization-ending calamity.

There are several reasons that it was not only reasonable, but almost required that Robert Kirkman engage with religion and religious belief in The Walking Dead, though the simplest reason is the one readers should turn to first. In The Walking Dead #94’s letters section, Kirkman explained how the series’ southern U.S. setting precipitated the inclusion of religion in the series, and how it was portrayed in the story, writing:

Religion won’t be a central theme of the series forever. It just felt odd to ignore due to the region where the story is set. We dealt with it in the comic a little from time to time.

In other words, for his characters, religion was a major influence – one way or another – before the outbreak, and this had to be reckoned with in the aftermath.

Aside from its zombie outbreak premise, The Walking Dead largely operated like a work of realist fiction; to ignore a fundamental truth about its setting would have broken the pact Robert Kirkman established with his readers early on. This meant that the series’ characters had to reflect real world values, and real world belief systems, in order for Kirkman to test how these things would hold up in response to an unexpected, civilization-ending calamity. To exclude religious faith from that overall project would have broken the verisimilitude that the series has routinely been praised for.

The Zombie Outbreak Was The Ultimate Test Of The Walking Dead’s Characters’ Faith

Whatever They Believed In

The Walking Dead was about humanity in a world where every institution has crumbled, including organized religion. If anything, the series could have perhaps engaged with religion and religiosity even further.

At its core, The Walking Dead was a story about humanity facing an existential threat on a global scale. That meant that everything characters previously believed – about God, about life after death, about the frail bonds holding civilization together – had to be audited as part of the story. Robert Kirkman used characters like Father Gabriel to embody the question of how religious faith would be challenged by a zombie outbreak, a philosophical query that has been baked into the zombie genre since its very beginning.

Further, The Walking Dead was about humanity in a world where every institution has crumbled, including organized religion. If anything, the series could have perhaps engaged with religion and religiosity even further – though as Robert Kirkman assured a concerned fan in the letters page to The Walking Dead #94, this was not his central thesis, or dominant theme, but rather one incidental element of a larger picture. As always, the Deluxe reprint of The Walking Dead serves as the perfect opportunity to revisit Kirkman’s comments on the series-in-progress, offering a unique insight into how the story was shaped.

The Walking Dead Deluxe #94 is available now from Image Comics.