Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) certainly made an impression on Walking Dead fans when he and his baseball bat "Lucille" showed up on the scene to wreak havoc — and put poor Glenn and Abraham in the ground. Few villains are quite as evil as The Walking Dead's latest, but will the AMC series ever reveal how this guy got to be so bad? Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman already has enough material for a Negan spinoff.
Though Negan has been a part of Kirkman's comic series for years, Kirkman is just now spilling secrets of the sociopath's history in a new story for Image+, a monthly previews catalog from the Walking Dead's comic book publisher. Not surprisingly, Negan was never an awesome guy — he was cheating on his wife before discovering she had life-threatening cancer — but he did try to play the hero by saving as many people as possible upon the outbreak of the zombie apocalypse. Unfortunately, when people didn't follow Negan's exact orders (and started dying because of it), he lost all of his chill and chose to rule with an iron fist — or, rather, a barbwire-covered bat.
The story would make an excellent spinoff. It's reminiscent of the Joker's origin story in The Killing Joke, which was recently adapted into a full-length animated feature. But will we ever see the undead takeover through the eyes of a younger Negan? Kirkman tells The Hollywood Reporter that he isn't sure it would work as well in the television show as it does on the page.
"It's not something we've really thought about," Kirkman says of putting Negan's backstory on screen. "That story works best when Negan has been around for many years. I'm not going to go on record to say that Negan lasts as long in the show as he does in the comic. You never know. But if we do get to that point, it'd be nice to see that story adapted. I love Jeffrey Dean Morgan with a burning fury of a thousand suns and I would love to see him tell that story and see the character go through those paces. It's a great way to get more context into who this guy is. It'd be neat but there are no plans as of yet."
Negan has a rich history, but if you want to get the details on it ASAP, your best bet is to check out the Image+ series.
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