I'm surprised Jack Kirby didn't create THE WALKING DEAD.

Kirby's genius was converting pop culture into comic book gold. He created an entire series based on a popular Science Fiction movie he had never even seen. He was inspired by the Depression Era pulp sensation Doc Savage to create two series, one in the 1950s and one in the 1960s. When he noticed in the 1940s that women were buying true romance magazines Kirby created the romance comics genre. He even had Captain America punch Hitler before America entered World War II.

Halloween 1968 the movie that was the template for THE WALKING DEAD comic, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was in the theaters. Fortunately for Robert Kirkman Kirby must have been too busy creating his Fourth World mythology while simultaneously free-lancing at Marvel to notice.

37 YEARS AGO TODAY

1980 was another of those Holiday shopping seasons when there wasn't any new Kirby comics for Santa to bring to the good little boys and girls. Marvel DID reprint X-MEN #8 (for the second time) in AMAZING ADVENTURES #14 six weeks earlier.

39 YEARS AGO TODAY

The 1978 Holiday Season found the shops devoid of any new Kirby comics. His most recent books, DEVIL DINOSAUR #9 and MACHINE MAN #9  had been released 3 months earlier. 

The only "new" Kirby in the shops was MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS #82, which reprinted all but one page of FANTASTIC FOUR #102 from eight years earlier.