Shane

Few characters leave a mark this indelible with such a compact comics footprint — Shane burst onto the scene in The Walking Dead #7 in 2007, courtesy of the legendary Modern Age team of Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard, sharing those grim, black-and-white pages with Rick Grimes, Lori Grimes, Carl Grimes, and Carol. Image Comics' post-apocalyptic saga is one of the most celebrated series of its era, and Shane's place within it — revisited in the 10th Anniversary Edition and the Deluxe reprint series — speaks to how essential his presence is to the story's DNA. With only a handful of catalog appearances, he's a character whose weight far exceeds his page count, the kind of figure that keeps fans coming back to those early issues to feel the full force of where it all began.