The Walking Dead’s Rick Grimes Returns in Skybound X #1

Rick Grimes lives once more. The zombie apocalypse hero of The Walking Dead returns within the first chapter of Rick Grimes 2000, a brand new serialized story from the pages of the five-issue anthology event series Skybound X. The outsized weekly sequence celebrating a decade of Skybound reunites The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman and Invincible artist Ryan Ottley for RG2K, a five-chapter serial described by the writer as “some of the bonkers tales we have ever advised.” Skybound X #1 continues a noncanonical backup story began in The Walking Dead #75, the place Rick Grimes awakens from his coma in a zombie apocalypse-turned-alien invasion of Earth.

The Strolling Useless #75 provides Rick a futuristic costume and a cybernetic prosthetic hand earlier than dropping him into the center of an alien assault as a military of super-soldiers revolt in opposition to their extraterrestrial overlords. Michonne reveals the aliens brought on the zombie apocalypse to deliver in regards to the downfall of civilization and switch what’s left of humanity right into a slave race to reap the planet’s water, and the story ends with a “to not be continued!“

Greater than a decade later, the story continues in Skybound X #1. In Rick Grimes 2000: Chapter 1, Rick battles a cyborg Governor with a laser sword when he makes an attempt to rescue his spouse, Lori Grimes, from the supervillain’s cybernetic clutches.

For Kirkman, who ended The Strolling Useless after 193 points in July 2019 earlier than revisiting the zombie saga with the one-shot Negan Lives in July 2020, RG2K is an opportunity to revive Rick Grimes inside a narrative that was supposed to be a joke.

“Very early on within the sequence [The Walking Dead] I began getting letters the place individuals would say, ‘You say you are going to do that e-book for a very very long time, however this concept does not appear to have any legs,'” Kirkman beforehand advised Entertainment Weekly in regards to the backup story in The Strolling Useless #75. “My response as a joke was, ‘Oh, we will this till difficulty 75, after which I’ll run out of concepts, after which I’ll do an alien invasion and simply form of utterly wreck the e-book. That is once we’ll soar the shark and it will be horrible and all people will hate it.'”

“After we obtained to difficulty 75, I knew that I would publicly joked about that and it was form of a factor that the fanbase knew about,” added Kirkman, referring to the joke he initially made within the letter column of The Strolling Useless #7. “Like, ‘Oh, 75, that is when the aliens are available, proper?'”

Skybound X #1, additionally that includes the return of TWD fan-favorite Clementine, is now accessible to personal. Rick Grimes 2000 continues in Skybound X #2, accessible at comedian e-book retailers and digital platforms on July 14.