As soon as the television adaptation of ‘The Walking Dead‘ premiered readers of the comics realized that we were dealing with a completely different beast.  The minimal cast of the comics was padded out with several brand new, made for TV characters, most of which have been killed off since then, with one notable exception… fan-favorite Darryl Dixon, portrayed by Norman Reedus.  Viewers have embraced the once subordinate, crossbow-slinging redneck who has blossomed into possibly the show’s biggest badass.  (Possibly, since TV Michonne isn’t as awesome as comic book Michonne.)

At the Amazing Arizona Comicon this past weekend, series creator Robert Kirkman discussed Darryl’s unique position on the show and addressed the likelihood of the breakout character transitioning into the comic book source material.

“I guess it wouldn’t be a bad thing if Daryl Dixon showed up in the comic. But I don’t know. I really like the separation. I like that when we sit down to write the show one of the first things we deal with is: ‘How does Daryl Dixon change this story?’ Because we always start from: ‘Ok, we like this part of the comic. How are we going to do it?’

“And it’s just always interesting to get in there and be like, ‘Oh, well his existence and the fact that his personality is this, and he would behave this way, means that he would react to this person differently than this and differently than that.’ And it’s just really a great thing for the show that he doesn’t exist in the comic. And I really like that.”

“But yeah, I don’t know. It would be cool if he was in the comic, but I don’t really have any plans on doing that. But I guess he would be the one if I was going to pull any character from the show into the comic, it would be him. Mostly just because I love Norman [Reedus]. Handsome dude.”

So in a lot of ways, it sounds like Darryl is a crucial part of the writers’ creative process, allowing them to deviate from strictly recreating the comics in live action.  Sadly, it doesn’t sound like Darryl will make his debut in the black and white comics anytime soon.

What do you think?  Are you sad that Darryl will only be in the TV show?  Do you want to see any other TV-original characters like T-Dawg or Jacquie adapted into the comics?  Or are there any comic-based characters that haven’t yet appeared on the show that you are looking forward to seeing?  (Negan, perhaps?  Of course they will have to tone down his language.)

Source: ComicBook.com