Note: Mild spoilers follow for people who have not seen Season 3.

The Walking Dead is returning to AMC on October 13th, and Season 4 promises to ratchet up the stakes for the remaining survivors. The Governor is still on the loose, the survivors have taken on new folks at the prison, and the rumor is that a new and dangerous threat is looming. To get some perspective on the new season -- and all things Walking Dead -- we went to the source: Robert Kirkman.

Robert Kirkman | Photo by: Cherie Roberts

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I’m really happy with how keeping Shane alive turned out. I didn't know how long the book was going to last, so that’s why I wrapped that up in issue six. In hindsight, it always felt a little premature, so I think that keeping that character around allowed him to have more of an impact on the other characters. In the comic, he kind of lost himself only in front of Rick, so Rick was really the only person who saw his spiraling downfall. But in the show, the fact that it affected Laurie in really cool ways -- and it affected Andrea and other characters -- I think was really neat.The Walking Dead, when I started it, was really just like any other project. It was probably the tenth or twelfth, maybe the ninth or tenth original comic book that I had come up with. I remember thinking -- because I always do the comics for myself -- and I remember thinking, “If there’s a lot of people out there like me, this is really going to be a comic they enjoy.” I set out to do something that would last ten, twenty years, because I wanted to tell the zombie movie that never ends. I was just so excited and so energized by the concept, and I was really into it when I was working on it. I thought that it had potential, but I thought that it had potential to last past issue 20. My goals were very, very small. So it for it to happen the way it has, I mean, I could have never foreseen that. But it really was just another comic that I was doing, and I was really excited about it, but it didn't really stand out.Yeah, that’s pretty crazy. It’s a pretty strange time. Aside from seeing all that kind of stuff in Target -- I was getting my hair cut, and I looked over at the counter next to me, and Darryl Dixon was in the bottom corner of Us Weekly or something, and I was like, “Oh wow, there’s that. That happens now. That’s my life.” Then I think it’s a Verizon commercial where a zombie comes in to get a new plan -- I know that’s not technically a Walking Dead zombie, but I don’t think that commercial would exist without the popularity of The Walking Dead. So that’s a crazy thing, that zombies have become a pop culture in-joke to a certain extent. Pretty weird.It’s been a matter of months -- I’m not gonna nail down the exact number months, because that’s no fun, but they’ve definitely lived through another winter. The first episode is called “30 Days Without [an Accident],” so we pick things up after a pretty long spell of things being pretty quiet. What you see is, all of our characters are in a very different place.I think it’s important to note that every other season is about a new location, and I think this season is more about the characters being in a different place mentally than being in a different place physically. I think that’s really cool, and you’re going to see a lot of big changes for a lot of big characters, with Rick probably the most. When we come back into this season, to see him, he’s definitely changed in very dramatic ways. He is trying to live a much more peaceful life. He has stepped back from his leadership role. He is focusing much more on Carl in a way that will actually benefit him, as opposed to the way he was in Season 3 where he was trying to protect him at all costs, but he was actually driving more towards this life of violence and unrest. Now he’s trying to set a good example for Carl and really show him that we can retain our humanity in this world, because that’s something that’s really important to him. Now he has Carl and Judith to deal with, so this is a very different Rick Grimes. But the episode is called “30 Days Without an Accident” because s**t kind of hits the fan when we start paying attention to the characters again. So while it has been a time of relative peace and Rick has had the luxury of being able to do this, that’s all going to go away very quickly.At times, all of them, but I really do enjoy writing Rick. I think that he is the central focus of the story for a reason. I think that a character that’s trying to do good against all odds is always something that’s fairly compelling. I’m very fond of Carl also. I really like writing for that guy. I’m completely fascinated by the idea of a kid growing up in this world and just how strange and bizarre it is. If you think about how growing up in this society affects us and how it changes our world view and how it makes us think certain things are okay and certain things aren’t okay. It’s really just the civilization around us that does that. I think, when Carl makes it to be, like, 20, if he were to step into our dimension, he would be like a guy from another planet. That’s how different this guy’s gonna be because of all the life experiences that he’s had. That to me is really interesting, and I like diving into that stuff.I’m pretty excited, very excited. To a certain extent, I feel like the 34-year-old me is in competition with the 24-year-old me. It’s like, “Okay, kid. This is what you did. Now that I’ve had this ten additional years of life experience, I’m going to set things up this way,” and that’s a fun challenge for me. It’s fun because I feel like the 24-year-old could win. [Laughs] But it’s great to go back to page one and think about it. It’s going to be set in this world, but it is a new cast and a new setting, and it’s going to be very different. It’s just exciting to be able to start over again and try to do cool stuff.Yeah, it’s a really different location with completely different people, so we are going to see an entirely different corner of the Walking Dead world. It definitely won’t be set in Georgia, I can at least say that. It’s important to us that this show exists on its own. The spinoff has to be a show worthy of existing, or else we’ve all sold out. So that’s something we’re all working hard towards doing, and I think we can pull it off. I think that the ideal situation is, when you’re watching the spinoff, you’re like, “Wow, this is a really awesome show.” The whole other show doesn’t need to exist for this show to be cool and stand on its own.Yeah, I mean, that’s something we can’t really get into. It’s a little too early to be discussing those kinds of things.Keep doing that. [Laughs]There’s a lot of mystery to this season. I’m really excited about that. There’s a lot of intrigue and there’s a lot of mysterious stuff happening that isn’t really explained right away. A lot of that is somewhat tied to the Governor. I think we’ve said in many interviews before that he’s definitely coming back, it’s just a matter of when or how. I think people are going to be kind of shocked in the way that we do bring him back. I love that we’re telling our own stories and that each episode is its own thing. In the back of the viewers’ minds they’re going to be like, “Yeah, but what about the Governor? Where’s he at?” And they’ll know when it’s this looming threat that could present itself at any moment. When it finally does, I think people are going to be pretty shocked.Thankfully, television is a collaboration, so I’m certainly not the only person working on the show. It’s a group effort, so I get to lean on people quite a bit. I don’t know, I manage my time okay, I guess. I love what I’m doing, and I really like writing comics. Comics, to me, I take the time someone would spend working on a hobby, and I work on the TV show and the comics and stuff in all that time combined, so it works out okay, I guess. But it’s hard keeping track of things sometimes.

The Walking Dead: Season 4 premieres Sunday, October 13th on AMC.