Nine months before he was sued by his former ilustrator for payments over their "Walking Dead" comic book and the TV show it spawned, Robert Kirkman made a joke he probably regrets now.
Asked during a podcast how a comic book writer should find an artist to draw his or her stories, Kirkman dryly replied, "Trickery and deceit."
On Thursday, Kirkman's original "Walking Dead" artist, Tony Moore, accused him of exactly that. Moore alleges in a lawsuit that Kirkman, a childhood friend with whom he collaborated on several comics, tricked him into surrendering his rights to them in 2005 in exchange for payments that never came.