Big news as comic giants Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard return to the universe of The Walking Dead for an all-new one-shot this July! The new story, Negan Lives #1, aims to build excitement for reopening comic shops impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to help shops regain their footing, Negan Lives will ship to retailers with no financial burden– there will be no freight cost on the shipments and stores will keep all revenue from sales. Also notable is the fact that there will be no digital release of the book, so getting your hands on a copy will require you to support local comic shops. This is an incredibly generous and seemingly unprecedented campaign that could do a lot of good for an industry struck hard by COVID.

“I’ve been inspired by Steve Geppi and Diamond’s efforts to shine a light on how essential the Direct Market is to our beloved industry with their #backthecomeback campaign,” said Kirkman. “While Charlie Adlard and I had laid the series to rest, this felt like something special we could do for the store owners who made our series a success to begin with. To that end, I’m happy to report that 100% of the revenue generated from this book will go to the stores selling it. The retailer community does backbreaking work to get comics into the hands of our loving fans, we should all be doing more in these trying times to show them how appreciated they are.”

The book itself is set after Negan’s exit from the mainline Walking Dead series. From Image/Skybound: Spurned by a slowly rebuilding society, Negan lives a life of desperate isolation… or does he? In the tradition of Here’s Negan, this all-new story in Negan Lives #1 gives readers a glimpse into what has happened to one of The Walking Dead‘s most popular characters in the time since his last appearance in The Walking Dead #174.

Negan Lives #1 (Diamond Code MAR208199) is a 36-page, black and white comic book, available exclusively at comic book shops on Wednesday, July 1. There are extremely rare Gold (Diamond Code MAR208201) and Silver (Diamond Code MAR208200) foil variants of Negan Lives #1 in limited quantities, so fans and series collectors will want to jump on this release as quickly as possible!