Although Outcast isn’t a religious show some of its inspirations are rooted in Robert Kirkman’s religious childhood memories. Rolling Stone recently sat down with Kirkman to discuss these origins along with the metaphors it creates in this eye-opening interview:
Rolling Stone: What do you remember about growing up in Lexington, Kentucky?
Robert Kirkman: My mom was a homemaker and my dad was a sheet-metal fabricator and an entrepreneur. I have a distinct memory of being in my dad’s truck, saying to him, “Your job seems so hard.” He said, “That’s what you do when you’re an adult. You get up every morning and go to work.” I was like, really? This sucks! [Laughs]
RS: You’ve been developing another of your comics, Outcast, as a show for Cinemax. You’ve said you’re not a particularly religious person, but the books and the show seem remarkably influenced by it.
RK: It comes from my slightly religious upbringing, which I completely glossed over when you asked me about my childhood earlier [laughs].
RS: Your mom went through a big religious phase when you were young, right?
RK: I … yes, she did. I don’t want to be disrespectful of religion. My mom went to a Pentecostal church for a number of months, maybe years — people speaking in tongues and all that. My mom would be like, I don’t want you to go to hell, so we’re going to church.
RS: But where did the idea of doing a series on possession, specifically, come from?
RK: Look…all right, fine. I witnessed an exorcism while I was at that church. I don’t like talking about it. This person was spitting and biting and growling and all kinds of crazy stuff. I don’t remember being scared. It seemed almost normal to me” “Right, they’re getting a demon out of that person.” When my mother was in her very religious phase, it was explained to me that people that are sick actually have demons in them making them sick. Weird shit like that. [Long pause] I wouldn’t say it messed with my mind. It was an interesting thing. I witnessed an exorcism.
RS: Like zombies, it’s a rich metaphor for exploring abstract ideas.
RK: No one had really dealt with the long-term exploration of how people would deal with a zombie epidemic before we did The Walking Dead, and I feel like this is sort of the same thing. No one has really treated demonic possession like a solvable problem. Maybe it’s something that a community could be proactive in terms of treating, instead of reactive. That’s where the show is eventually going to go. It’s terrifying to think there could be a thing out there that could go inside of you and make you not you. That’s something that we all deal with, to a certain extent. I think back to how I was as a 19-year-old, and how all my life experiences have changed who I am — and if I met him, I don’t know if we’d get along. He’s probably an asshole.
Remember to read the entire interview over at Rolling Stone!
