The Walking Dead: Survivors' Guide

The Walking Dead Survivors' Guide #1-4

by Robert Kirkman (Story), Tim Daniel (Story and Book Design), Charlie Adlard (Art)

Everything you've ever wanted to know about the cast of The Walking Dead. The Survivor's Guide is a handy checklist of all the characters who have appeared in the series thus far, alive or dead. This series is a can't-miss supplement to the hit comic book series that is now a hit TV series on AMC!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Zombies, Horror, Fiction, Comic Book, Graphic Novels Comics

112 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2011

About the author

Robert Kirkman is an American comic book writer best known for his work on The Walking Dead, Invincible for Image Comics, as well as Ultimate X-Men and Marvel Zombies for Marvel Comics. He has also collaborated with Image Comics co-founder Todd McFarlane on the series Haunt. He is one of the five partners of Image Comics, and the only one of the five who was not one of the original co-founders of that publisher.

Robert Kirkman's first comic books were self-published under his own Funk-o-Tron label. Along with childhood friend Tony Moore, Kirkman created Battle Pope which was published in late 2001. Battle Pope ran for over 2 years along with other Funk-o-Tron published books such as InkPunks and Double Take.

In July of 2002, Robert's first work for another company began, with a 4-part SuperPatriot series for Image, along with Battle Pope backup story artist Cory Walker. Robert's creator-owned projects followed shortly thereafter, including Tech Jacket, Invincible and Walking Dead.

Reviews

[Wendy Holliday]

A good synopsis for someone in the midst of reading the GN's.

I read a majority of them a year or so ago, and although I enjoy the story overall, it really is disturbing at time. I have just plain forgotten so many characters because that is just the nature of the beast that is The Walking Dead.

Kirkman has a habit of introducing and killing characters off on a GRR Martin scale.

You just get to know someone, and bam! they're gone.

[Cathy]

Time for a compendium. Who can remember all these characters?

Everything you've ever wanted to know about the cast of The Walking Dead. The Survivor's Guide is a handy checklist of all the characters who have appeared in the series thus far, alive or dead.

Up to and including The Walking Dead, Vol. 14: No Way Out, aka the one in Alexandria with the Herd. Published in November 2011, a good refresher. I read the first third of this and then starting to skim and only looked at the characters that were still alive at that point.

[Alondra Miller]

4 Stars a nice guide to our survivors and the deceased.

Each character bio in alphabetical order, with episodes/issue of appearance, relationships and status.

[Ron Turner]

Profiles of all of the characters in the graphic novel series. I liked how it showed their death scenes. But it was repetitive at times and could've used better editing. Some characters were listed as living but then you find out they died just a few sentences down in their profile.

[Sooraya Evans]

Grabbed this one right after the end of season 7.
Can't believe a lot of them are long gone :(

[Erik]

Our Story So Far.

[Brenda]

I'm not quite sure what to think about this one. I guess it's a good resource to have if you're reading the series and can't remember who is who. But it's not really a good one to read straight through, and it's not anything I'd want to own.

[Javi]

Un buen resumen de los personajes que han ido apareciendo durante todo el proceso de The Walking Dead. Según se aprecia irán repasándose todos los personajes por entregas; en la primera entrega tenemos a 20 personajes, listados por orden alfabético.

Sirve como resumen, por si nos perdemos entre tantos personajes. Y también para poder ir recordando si viven o mueren. Podemos averiguar en cuántos número salen, qué papel juegan en cada una de las etapas de la historia, sus relaciones, etc.

Me parece una buena idea.

[Alex]

I haven't read all the books that go with the companion just yet, but it is nice to flip through sometimes and just read about things from other books. I enjoy reminiscing about who died and who is still living but I don't look at pages of characters that I don't know or don't want to know about.
I recommend this to readers who have read Walking Dead numbers 1 - 16.
Rating: 5.7/10
Parental Rating: 16+

[Kaethe]

I thought it was going to be a guide on how to survive the apocalypse, when it was a guide to the characters. Nothing wrong with that, just not what I was in the mood for. It's probably very useful to have around, just to keep everyone straight while you're reading or watching.

Library copy.

[JayLando22]

This collection is very redundant and flows very poorly. I understand what the aim was and while technically it succeeds; there is no real need for this to exist. No new art, simple Wikipedia style passages and not much else.

A lot of it repeats. Not only that but it does not paint a clear picture of the entire story. The entries too piecemeal. Even for fans, avoid.

[Niels]

I like this book between the comics because after some issues it sure got a bit confusing around characters.
This book is great because it tells who's still alive and who died.
It actually shows how many characters appeared in the comics already which was a higher number than I expected.

Reading this guide gets a boring sometimes, so I read it in small parts in between the comics.

[Kelli]

This is a good supplement to the Walking Dead graphic novels. It details all the characters, dead and alive, who have been in the graphic novels. Don't read this before reading the graphic novels, or it'll spoil the endings of each novel.

[Mati]

Walking Dead comics tends to snuff your favorite character, when you do not expect it. It is helpful guide to the survivors and even if it is little spoilerish, it is must have if you are fan of Walking Dead.

Zombies are dead so they are not included :P

[Robert Grant]

An excellent resource and companion book to the main series of comics. Note - not to be read until the reader has finished Volume 14. This is very important as the guides give away valuable plot points and incidents that happen up to and including volume 14.

[Philbeert]

Continuous misspellings and printing errors make this collection seem rushed and sloppy. Overall, a good reference for the numerous characters introduced throughout the series.

[Jennifer]

Helped me keep some of the minor characters straight. Got redundant after awhile.

[Marla]

While it's nice to have a reference for all the characters in the comic series, there was a lot of repetitive information given. Some characters were painful to get through because of this.

[for-much-deliberation ...]

This survivor's guide chronicles all the characters appearing in the series...

[PJ]

Not really worth rating, but a good reference for when a new volume comes out.

[Jess]

im not a huge fan of these recap fanwhore collections but it was nice to remember people, and to see who could potentially show up again...

[Ann Osburn]

Great companion book to the comic series. Absolutely perfect resource for the time when you're thinking "I can't remember..."

[Mark]

Helpful guide to the characters if you're reading The Walking Dead over a long period and lose track of who's who.

[Greg]

It's helpful if you are reading through the comics, but by itself it really isn't that interesting.

[Daud]

it is a amazing book !!!

[Fabián Castillo]

this is very interesting :)

[Hyzenthlay]

Sina really dropped the ball on this one. Riddled with typos, it was almost painful to read at times.

[Jennifer]

sneaked a peek, glad to see it won't ruin show for me since there are a lot of differences

[Brielle "Bookend" Brooks]

✨📖 “The dead forget. The living archive.” ✨

4.5 out of 5 Bloodstamped Index Cards

Best for: Completionists, character lovers, and those still asking: wait, who survived that arc?
Skip if: You want new plot. This is a record, not a continuation. It breathes for the ones who no longer can.

The Survivors’ Guide is the stillness after the storm—a reference companion that memorializes faces both beloved and long-forgotten. Each character entry feels like reading a gravestone, even when they’re still breathing. Some names make you flinch. Others make you wonder how you ever let them go.

This isn’t emotional storytelling—it’s forensic. A reminder that in a series built on loss, remembering who was there matters almost as much as what happened.

It’s not essential. But it feels essential.

Because the longer you walk through The Walking Dead, the more you realize: memory is survival too.

[Harriet]

This is a nice volume to add to the collection if you're a completist but it's not much more than that. It's graphically quite cool, using red, black, and white pages that almost look like a magazine, but it's very text-heavy and there isn't much new art, if any. The character descriptions are interesting enough but you don't get anything from them that you don't get just from reading the series. I suppose it is a nice refresher; paging through it there were bits and pieces I'd forgotten since reading issues from way back.

Of course, now with the series finished, there are a great many characters who aren't included in this volume, and the information for many of those who are is incomplete, but that's to be expected with a book over ten years old.

Although it said volume 1 on the spine there was never a volume 2.