The Walking Dead and Invincible creator Robert Kirkman is breaking from his pattern of the zombie apocalypse and angsty teen superheroes. The writer recently spoke about his new project, Thief of Thieves, a crime caper that the writer hopes brings a little “real world” balance to his work.

via Shelf Life,

“It’s somewhat of a crime-caper comic about a professional thief named Conrad Paulson. He is one of the greatest thieves who’s ever lived, but he’s gotten to a point in his life where he realizes that he’s chosen his professional life over his family life and greatly regrets that. He’s got an adult son who is kind of following in his footsteps but doing a horrible job, and he has an estranged wife that he is still very much in love with. Our story picks up when he is trying to turn his back on his profession and rekindle his relationship with his wife and trying to fix his son’s horrible predicament.”

Kirkman also revealed that he has a desire to evolve more as a writer, with several more grounded projects slated for the future similar to Thief of Thieves.

“Moving forward with my career, I think I will do more grounded, realistic stuff. I’ve had a lot of fun doing big science-fiction action in things like The Infinite and cool fun kids stuff in Super Dinosaur and superhero stuff like Invincible. Thief of Thieves and some of the other things I’m developing are a little bit more grounded and a little bit more “real world,” somewhat more consistent with what I’ve done with the Walking Dead. It’s odd, but I think the Walking Dead has been the most grounded, realistic thing that I’ve done thus far. I think I’m going to do more stuff like that moving forward.”

This direction of Kirkman’s work does not come as much of a surprise. He’s always had a superb grasp on an ability to tell very human, emotionally driven stories no matter the setting, and Thief of Thieves seems like a first step in the natural progression of his evolution as a writer. There is no release news on the project as of yet, but check out the first two covers of Thief of Thieves below!

[Click Through the Gallery to Blow Sh!t Up!]

Thief of Thieves is slated to hit store shelves on February 8th.