Brian Blake (Comic Series)


 * For the TV series character, see The Governor (TV Series).
 * For the victims of Brian Blake, see Brian Blake's Victims.

"Well stranger. We're feeding them strangers."

- Brian Blake to Rick, Michonne and Glenn.

Brian Blake is a primary antagonist in the comic series and one of the primary protagonists in the novel The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor. He is the brother of Philip Blake, and uncle of Penny Blake. While the comic refers to The Governor as Philip, the novel reveals that Brian Blake is, in fact, The Governor. Brian takes his brother's name after Philip dies.

Pre-Apocalypse
Although Brian is three years older than Philip, he has always relied on Philip for protection. The novel describes Brian as sickly, frail, and "the runt" of the two brothers. He studied at the University of Georgia and got his degree in comparative literature. He is intelligent, but unable to harness his wits toward anything productive. At the time of the outbreak he had failed at several business ventures that were funded with his parents money. He has a vast knowledge of music and wears band t-shirts throughout the novel (REM and Weezer among them). Just before the outbreak, Brian moves back in with his parents after a brief marriage to a Jamaican woman named Jocelyn.

Post-Apocalypse
When the dead began to rise, Brian hides out in the crawlspace of his parents' empty town house. Philip, his two friends Nick Parsons and Bobby Marsh, and his daughter Penny Blake, leave Waynesboro and take a detour to check on Philip's parents. Philip had forgotten that Brian was living there and isn't exactly happy about having to look after his older brother. The group finds shelter at Wiltshire Estates: an upper class gated golfing community. Rick and his group also pass through Wiltshire Estates a few months after Philip and his crew leave. After Bobby dies of blood loss due to a zombie bite, Philip, Nick, Penny, and Brian leave with weapons and supplies loaded up into Philip's Chevy Suburban. On their way out, Brian leaves a sign at the entrance of Wiltshire Estates that reads: "ALL DEAD DO NOT ENTER." Ironically, the sign that the future Governor creates alerts Rick to the dangers of Wiltshire Estates.

Brian and his group, led by Philip, make their way to Atlanta through wrecks and walkers. During this time Brian usually shies away from combat situations. He typically hunkers down with Penny while Philip and Nick shoot and slay walkers. They find a temporary safe haven with the Chalmers family in an apartment in Atlanta. David, Tara, and April Chalmers are traveling musicians who are eking out a living in the first floor of an apartment building. Philip and his group help them expand into the upper levels of the apartment and get food and supplies from nearby stores. Brian becomes slightly more confident in his time at the apartments. He volunteers to clean out the upper floors of the apartment with Philip and Nick. The living arrangement is perfect until Philip takes his blossoming romance with April too far. As they begin to have sex April tells Philip to stop and that its too soon. Philip, in the heat of the moment, is unable to stop himself. He realizes what he's done immediately after but thinks he might still be able to salvage the relationship. The next morning All of his group's weapons are gone. Tara tells them, at gunpoint, to get out now. They leave and make their way via motorcycle to an abandoned old plantation house. The house is secure and free of walkers, for the most part. They have food to last them through winter and the house itself is on an orchard. Brian suspects that they were followed to the house and are now being staked out. His suspicions are confirmed when a drug-addled and heavily armed gang come to take the house away from them. Philip makes a deal with the group's leader to let them walk away but Philip realizes that the gang plans to kill them as soon as they're out of the house. They sprint down the orchard where Philip tells Brian to hide with Penny and keep her safe at all costs. Philip and Nick stealthily take out several of the gang members. However, one slips past them and shoots Penny. Just as the shooter is about to execute Brian, Philip arrives and kills the gang member.

Enraged at his daughter's death, Philip begins mercilessly kicking Brian and severely injuring him. Philip cannot bring himself to put Penny down so he keeps her tied to a tree. They leave the plantation house and come across Woodbury: a beat up old town with a fairly large group of survivors. Philip and his crew take residence in an apartment there. Philip sneaks Penny into the apartment and begins feeding her appendages from bodies that he claims he didn't kill. One night Nick spots Philip dragging a girl out to the woods against her will. He sets out to stop Philip with a shotgun while Brian tries to convince him that whatever it is going on with Philip can be fixed. Nick kills Philip and accidentally kills the girl Philip abducted. Brian kills Nick on the spot. Philip dies in Brian's arms.

The next day there is a town meeting about the rising number of deaths. A group of National Guard soldiers are terrorizing the citizens of Woodbury into obeying their every command. When one older man tries to leave, their leader, Gavin, shoots him in the back of the head. Brian, who always relied on Philip for protection since childhood, begins wondering what Philip would do in this situation. While Gavin's followers are outside, Brian has an out of body experience in which he carries out his vision of what his brother would do. Brian walks toward Gavin and unloads his magazine into him. Brian encourages the people of Woodbury to help him take out the remaining National Guard soldiers. Martinez, the man who eventually helps Rick, Michonne, and Glenn escape from Woodbury, asks Brian his name. Brian tells Martinez that his name is Phillip Blake.

Woodbury
Brian eventually comes to lead Woodbury under his new name, Philip. When he attains power he adopts the title, the Governor. He keeps the citizens of Woodbury safe, fed, and entertained. He stages cage match style fights in which two people fight in a circle, surrounded by shackled zombies. When Rick, Glenn, and Michonne reach Woodbury, Martinez hands them over to the Governor. The Governor appears friendly at first, but soon reveals that he intends to feed them to his group of captive zombies if they don't tell him where they've been hiding out.

As Rick, Glenn, and Michonne attempt to escape the Governor cuts off Rick's hand. Michonne retaliates by biting off a portion of the Governor's ear. The Governor has Michonne and Glenn locked away and sends an unconscious Rick to the infirmary. The Governor feeds Rick's hand to his zombie niece Penny. The Governor repeatedly rapes and tortures Michonne while Glenn is forced to listen from an adjoining room. Eventually, the Governor enlists Martinez to help Rick's group escape from Woodbury in order to find out where Rick's prison is. Brian was encountered by Michonne after she was released from captivity. There she proceeded to fist-fight with, and eventually knock out Brian. From there she proceeded to graphically torture Brian until near-death: gouging out his right eye, cutting off his right arm, and castrating him. Michonne was forced to flee Brian's apartment by his bodyguards.

Brian was saved by Bob, the town drunk, who conveniently happened to be an ex field-medic. He spent the next few days recovering from his injuries inflicted by Michonne. He awaited the return of Martinez, who never returned to Brian. Brian sent a search party out to look for Martinez, who had been killed by Rick. Although Martinez had died, Brian still eventually found the prison after sending search parties to scan the surrounding area.

The Prison Assault
The Governor attacks the prison with a fleet of trucks led by a tank that is mostly for show. Rick and his crew put up a valiant fight from behind the prison gates and Andrea's sharp shooting forces the Governor to retreat. While the Governor outlines a new strategy, Michonne and Tyreese follow the Woodbury militia to ambush them. Tyreese is captured and the Governor says he will kill Tyreese if he isn't granted access to the prison. Rick and his group do not comply and Tyreese is executed using Michonne's katana.

Eventually the Governor realizes his only chance of taking over the prison is to drive his tank over the fences. Rick and his group attempt to flee, but only a handful survive the attack. Axel, Patricia, Hershel, Billy, Alice, Lori and Judith are all killed while trying to escape from the prison. After realizing that the Governor has forced her to kill Lori and Judith, a Woodbury citizen named Lilly kills the Governor and kicks him to the roamers who devour his corpse.

Novel Series
Brian Blake was featured in the novel The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor, which depicts his struggle to survive the zombie apocalypse with his brother Philip, his niece Penny and their friends. They eventually arrive at Woodbury and the origins of his legacy as the Governor are revealed.

Killed By

 * Lilly Caul

Lilly is horrified after realizing that she's killed Lori and her baby, Judith. She kills the Governor and uses him to distract the zombies while she leads the surviving Woodbury citizens out of danger into the prison.

Killed Victims
This list shows the victims Brian has killed:


 * Gene Gavin
 * Nick Parsons
 * Bruce Cooper (Before Reanimation)
 * Tyreese
 * Patricia
 * Alice
 * Hershel Greene
 * Numerous counts of zombies and caused deaths of Billy Greene, Axel and 57 unnamed people.

Penny Blake
Although his brother's daughter has turned into a zombie, The Governor seems to ignore it. He loved her and tried to keep her undead form safe, and feeds her with dead or alive survivors (he kills the alive survivors for her, if possible). Still, if she tries to attack him, he slaps her in the face, or just tells not to attack. It's revealed that he has kept her in his house for months.

Bruce Cooper
The Governor seems to respect Bruce more than Gabe, his other right-hand man. He praises Bruce often, usually of his strength. When he died, The Governor seemed surprisingly more upset, than usually.

Philip Blake
Philip is Brian's younger brother. Philip was always more capable of being a leader than Brian while growing up, with Philip always being the one to be grounded to reality while Brian was seemingly in his own world. When the apocalypse started, Philip accidentally ran into Brian and brought him along with his own two friends Bobby and Nick. Brian always looked up to Philip despite being older than him and tried to be as strong as his brother often. After Philip passed away it seemingly pushed Brian the extra mile into becoming The Governor, taking on several of Philip's personality traits along with his name. It is safe to assume he also adopted his brothers insanity during his role as the Governor.

Nick Parsons
Even though Nick was initially a best friend of Philip and Bobby Marsh, the ensuing traumas of the apocalypse drove Nick into closer commradery with Brian, the last "sane one" he saw within their group. As Philip's actions lead to their "eviction" from the Chalmers' apartment, Nick began slowly losing his edge and tried convincing Brian that his brother was going insane. After the death and reanimation of Penny, Philip brutally beats Brian for losing sight of her. Nick is the one to help the latter heal and rehabilitate, informing him of his brothers derranged activities with Penny's surviving attackers. Brian shares Nick's concerns when Philip brings along the reanimated Penny until they arrive at Woodbury when things come to a serious head. Nick and Brian discover Philip killing survivors to feed to a zombified Penny, going as far as to come across his latest victim. Nick tries to stop him but winds up killing the victim and mortally injuring Philip before losing his mind himself, prompting the tired and hardened Brian to shoot Nick in the head.

Trivia

 * In 2009, The Governor was ranked as IGN's 86th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time.
 * In a Comic Book Resources interview, Robert Kirkman jokingly said: "A lot of different characters have aspects of my personality, I think, but for the most part, I'm just making people up. Not one character is exclusively based on one person. Except for The Governor, who is exactly like Joe Quesada [editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics]. They are literally exactly the same."|[2]
 * Regarding the torture and medical care of The Governor, Robert Kirkman wrote: "[I]t wasn't that Bob was such a good medic that suddenly came out of nowhere that saved Governor's life-although he certainly did save his life. The idea is that Michonne was keeping The Governor alive, so she could torture him more. His wounds were bad, but not impossible to heal from."|[3]
 * The Governor has suffered most pain in the series and mainly survived of them (except the final shot in the head by Lilly). For example gunshots (chest, shoulder, cheek), amputations (ear, eye, fingernails, arm, some parts of his cheek and possibly penis), bloodloss, been exposed to fire (Michonne stopped his arm nub's bleeding with blowtorch), hits, bites and kicks (numerous counts, most from Michonne) and numerous falls (fall from Jared's tank, explosion). He has also vomited badly several times (both puke and blood) and he's been drilled in the shoulder.
 * The Governor is one of the two people in the series to lose an eye, Carl is the second.
 * The Governor lost his left eye which is opposite of Carl who lost his right.
 * The Governor's kiss with Penny shows one of several incidents proving the survivors cannot be turned into zombies by exchanging body fluids.
 * Brian had mentioned to zombified Penny that he had tried cannibalism.
 * Brian is one of the many amputees in The Walking Dead. For other victims, see Amputated Victims.
 * Brian managed to have his arm amputated by Michonne.
 * Brian, along with Rick Grimes, Andrea, Michonne, and Abraham Ford have killed the most named characters either as a zombie or as a living person.
 * Brian is one of the few characters with a continuing nickname.