Dad's sheriff hat? Tick. A sense of sheer despair at the world he's grown into? Tick. An awful (lack of a) haircut? Tick. Yep, that's essentially Carl in a nutshell. He's only 7 at the start of the comic books, meaning he's subjected to the apocalypse from an earlier age. After the death of Lori in the prison, Carl matured and grew into a well-polished child soldier in the comics, a process he's currently going through in the TV show. Plenty of people aren't fans of his character, but he's a child in a Hell-on-Earth world, cut him some slack.