Art & Creativity Quote by Robert Kirkman

The flex here is disguised as craft talk. Kirkman’s line is half-defense, half dare: he’s pushing back against the lazy reader’s assumption that every character is a ventriloquist dummy for the author’s voice. In a medium like comics, where dialogue has to do more work in fewer words, “everybody talks like me” isn’t just a stylistic tell - it’s a credibility leak. If Rick, Michonne, and Negan all sound like the same snarky guy at a convention panel, the world collapses.

The phrasing matters. “Well see” has the casual cadence of someone correcting you without granting you the dignity of a formal rebuttal. Then “good enough” performs a sly double move: modesty on the surface, gatekeeping underneath. He’s not claiming genius; he’s implying a baseline competence that any serious writer should meet, and by extension suggesting that people who think characters must mirror the author are missing something fundamental about fiction.

The subtext is also about authorship as performance. Kirkman built a career in genre spaces that constantly litigate “authenticity” - who’s speaking, who’s being represented, who’s being sensationalized. By insisting on differentiated voices, he’s asserting control over his characters as independent agents, not mouthpieces, and positioning himself against the criticism that his work is just his personality in costume.

Contextually, it’s a writer talking like a showrunner: character voice isn’t ornament, it’s infrastructure. If the voices are distinct, the drama feels inevitable instead of authored. That’s the trick, and the point.