Robert Kirkman’s ComicsPRO Keynote Speech: “I honestly don’t really care for Batman” with a prediction as to what will save the comics industry – animation #comicspro
Image Comics partner and head of Skybound Entertainment, Robert Kirkman gave the Keynote Speech at ComicsPRO this year. I did not expect to be called out quite as much as I did, especially as I am a world away. He began, faced with a raised lectern.
Robert Kirkman, talking to me, at the ComicsPRO Keynote Speech 2026
“All right, I anticipated this being a flat surface. We’re already off to a great start. So I don’t really prepare things usually. I usually just wing it, just the way I do things, for better or worse. So I didn’t really prepare anything for today. I had some notes. You don’t know what I was gonna talk about. Then, hanging out with Eric Stephenson last night [Image Comics Publisher] , I was like, well, let me just flip over my notes and make sure there’s not anything inflammatory or anything that’s gonna be too weird. I started going over the notes, and I couldn’t even put my thoughts together based on my notes. I would look down and go, “I don’t know what I was trying to say with this,” and “I don’t know what this was.” I told Eric, “This is gonna be real bad. That’s exactly how it’s gonna go. People gonna think I’m a moron. So I stayed up late and I wrote a speech. But I’m not gonna look up, so I hope you like to look at the top of my head. I don’t have a flat surface, so I’m gonna hold this thing. I guess my point is I want to lower expectations. And then, where are the cameras for the live stream? Is this one? Rich, don’t take something I say in and misquote me in an article heading… It’s great. Let’s do this. Rob, failing in front of you is gonna break my heart. Todd, Wanda, everybody else at the Image table: don’t judge me too harshly. Here we go.”
“I’m a bit of an anomaly when it comes to comic creators. I have an… I have a good… I’m already great. I don’t have an affinity for the classic characters. I’m too loud. I mean, I love me some Spider-Man, but it was never my goal to write it. I honestly don’t really care for Batman. You can quote me on that, Rich. It might be because Batman/Predator was the first Batman I have read, and after that, Batman without Predator is just sort of lame. That’s also an okay quote.”
“I started reading comics in 1990. I read mostly Marvel, but very quickly, all my favourite artists left and formed Image Comics. So that’s when I became enamoured with them. From that point, I was hooked. I wanted to make comics my life, and I wanted to create my own new characters. I didn’t work at Marvel Comics. I left in 2008. For the last 20 years, I’ve lived the most rewarding creative years beyond anything I could’ve imagined. I honestly feel fortunate to live that life. It is due in no small part to the people in this room. Sincerely, from the bottom of my heart: thank you. Please give yourself a round of applause.
“In the pandemic, I got bored, and I got sad. I found myself wanting to go back to simpler times. I bought an embarrassing number of very expensive, very complicated Transformers statues. They would sometimes take the better part of a full day to assemble them. I would just stare at them for hours after I was done, thinking back to my love of G.I. Joe and Transformers. In that dark period of time, it was a beacon of powerful nostalgia that helped me immensely.
“So when I heard that the licenses were up for grabs, I scrambled the team at Skybound. A few short months later, we were hard at work on what became the Energon Universe. The work that we as a company have done in this line of books is something I’m very proud of. What we’ve accomplished is right up there with The Walking Dead and Invincible, in my opinion, taking those well-known, well-loved franchises and turning them into something new: a deeply interconnected universe that is woven together with very tight continuity, injected with new characters. Void Rivals is honestly something I’m as excited to work on as I would be as a fan to read it. I just love it. “It’s really opened my eyes to the intoxicating power of a well-established brand and a built-in fan base.
“What else in comics is working these days? Since this question gets asked a lot, the things I hear people answering: the Image Universe, the Absolute Universe, the Invincible Universe, Battle Beast… One of those four things they have in common: they are established brands with a built-in fan base wrapped in a thick coating of new. They are familiar, but they are new.
“Before the pandemic, one of my favourite things each year, for these retailer breakfasts that I would do at San Diego and New York Comic Con, it was so fun to get to interact with retailers in a setting like this one and get direct feedback: what we were doing right, what we were doing wrong. Something I’ve been able to recapture somewhat in the retailer Zooms that we’re doing frequently these days. At one of these breakfasts, the year before I ended The Walking Dead, the retailer said to me, “Sales are dropping on The Walking Dead in my store. What are you planning to do to get numbers back up?” I couldn’t say, “I’m not doing anything. I’m actually a year away from a book,” because it was still a closely guarded secret that only about five people knew. I honestly don’t recall my answer, but I do think about that question. The Walking Dead is still very popular. It’s one of the best-selling lines in trade paperbacks and hardcovers even today, if you can believe it. And yet it definitely had a peak, and that peak is quite a few years past by this point. Things have their day, and then they settle down.”
“Sometimes I think the original sin of this industry, a thing that holds it back the most, is that we as an industry often refuse to move on. Batman was created in the 1930s. Spider-Man was created in the 1960s. Transformers was created in the 80s. Invincible was created in the 2000s. All of these started as new ideas. They had their peaks of popularity, and they’ve had new peaks and new valleys to varying degrees of success ever since. Invincible has a hit show, and it’s hard to keep the collections in stock. It may be in its peak right now, or it may still be climbing. We’re launching season four of the show on Amazon Prime, March 18. I am contractually obligated to say that we have a massive fighting game dropping on all platforms April 30. I will also note that we have an exclusive version of that that is only available to the direct market, which is one of the first times we’ve ever done that. We’re doing so much Invincible merchandise that there are days that I could sit in my email and go from one review to the next, approving all the T-shirts, board games, action figures, statues, posters, pyjamas, teapots, and hang gliders that are on the way to you in the next year or so.
“But that was not always the case. The industry is not always kind to new ideas. New ideas can struggle. Even though Invincible very much qualifies as an established brand these days with a built-in fan base, there was a time where it almost felt like we had an adversarial relationship in this industry. Invincible launched to a measly 11,000 copies, quickly dropped to 5,000 copies, plateaued but then corrected, climbing up to almost 15,000 copies at its peak around 70 or so, and then dropped to an average of around 12,000 copies by the time it was in its final year. For a very long time, month after month, this industry was sending a very clear message to me: we want less of this. We are not excited by this. Maybe you should’ve stopped a while ago. Poor Ryan Ottley had to draw nearly 130 issues, feeling like he was drawing the redheaded stepchild book to The Walking Dead. But we loved the book, Ryan, Corey and myself, we were having the time of our lives. We didn’t really care about the sales. We were stubborn. Luckily, the success of The Walking Dead, to a certain extent, subsidised Invincible and allowed us to continue until we had told the story we intended to tell, and the book ended on our terms. Or, as Rich Johnston says cancelled.”
“Sometimes, I think about how successful this series is, how it’s a staple of the industry now, and how easily it could’ve just not made it to this point. It could’ve been thrown in the pile of amazing new ideas that just didn’t get a toehold in the industry. I would list some of these titles here, but I have fans whose feelings would get hurt. I have friends whose feelings would get hurt.
“I have regrets… can I start over? I think we’re in an exciting place in this industry. We’ve recovered from a low after the post-pandemic boom. We are recovering. Make sure I get that right: we’re recovering from a low after the post-pandemic boom. There’s a number of bright spots emerging, and it really does seem like we’re slowly winning back some of the wary with new hot books emerging. But I think we could do better at nurturing the new books that today will become the reliable mainstays of the future. The Spider-Mans, Ninja Turtles, and Invincibles of tomorrow are out there, and they just need a little bit of help from you to grow into what they could become.
“Now, I’m not saying I expect you to suddenly start ordering higher on books you can’t sell, and I would never imply that I think you guys don’t know how to order books for your stores. I’m just saying, I think we all need to try to identify what can be talked up in your store and recommended to a valued customer. Even if you all just order an extra single copy or two of a book that catches your attention, that would go a long way for those books out there trying to get traction.
“I planned this speech a few weeks ago. I didn’t do any work on it. Since that time, I’ve been heartened by the frankly unprecedented response to D’Orc. And now, just this past Wednesday, White Sky. I didn’t want to throw this whole speech away. So instead I’ll just say mission accomplished. we did it. Congratulations, us. I’m so thrilled this speech could retroactively result in the overwhelming support of this retail community that this committee is showing these new series launches.”
“The books to look at on the immediate horizon are Tigress Island by Patrick Kindlon and EPH, and in April, Red Roots by Lorenzo De Felici. I’ve also seen a recent sales bump on Ghost Pepper and Blood And Thunder at Skybound. And my Skinbreaker with David Finch is the most successful launch I’ve ever had for a new creator-owned book. So things are looking very good from my perspective. And thank you. I don’t know if you guys realize how seriously I take my job, and that job is providing you with awesome product to sell in your stores, product that will excite your customers as much as it excites me. To that end, I’ll wrap this up with a couple of announcements.”
“Now this is the familiar-but-new portion of what’s doing. And now to go to the completely new portion: Terminal. A new superhero book written by myself and Joe Casey. It is drawn by Andy Kubert, David Finch, and Art Adams. Again, my goal is to give you product that is undeniable, that people are gonna be rushing into your store to get. I could not be more excited about the series. This is an expansive superhero universe, the first time I’ve done this since Invincible. This book is so massive that I would guess around 18 issues will be done by the time issue one ships. Joe Casey and I are writing it together. Andy, David Finch, Art Adams are all drawing different issues in arcs. We’ve been working on this for so long that 18 issues will be done when issue 1 ships. Again, this is going to be a book that you can rely on to be shipping on time, that will always be there for you as the interest in the book hopefully grows over time.
“Again, thank you. I love that we have an open dialogue and that we’re able to exchange feedback at all times. To that end, I will say that we at Skybound and Image always want to hear from you. If there’s anything we can do to make your jobs easier, we will try to do it. Like right now, I’m gonna stop talking, and you can get on with your day.”
“Can a Keynote have a postscript? There are no rules, we can do what we want. I couldn’t be more excited about the fuiture of this industry and I don’t mean in an I’m doing a Keyote at ComicsPRO way, because what I’m seeing with Invincible and the way that the animated series is fueling the sales on the trades in the direct market is something that, to me, is a sign that there’s a potential to build something really exciting in this industry, that will sustain us for years and years and years. I’m getting flashing red zeroes? I’ve gone overtime. I’m very sorry.”
“So what I mean is: everybody talks about manga and how successful manga is. The thing that makes manga so successful is the manga-to-anime pipeline. With Invincible, we’re seeing that you can, with American comics, basically do the exact same thing. Invincible is an animated series that adapts the comic book very closely, and it is doing really well. All of the streaming services are so excited about adult animation that they are rolling out entire divisions trying to do that. I think that has more comic books adapted in this way, because having done Invincible, comics being adapted into animation really is the most seamless transition. I feel like the two mediums are just made for each other. So I think that there is a future where we can have a comic-to-animation pipeline that will fuel this entire industry in a completely unprecedented way. And we’re already seeing the beginnings of it now. So I’m very bullish on the future of this industry. I love you all. I’m sorry I stammered a couple of times. Thank you so much.”