This October, cartoonist Tillie Walden’s story of a teenage girl trying to survive in the post-zombie apocalypse world of Robert Kirkman’s “The Walking Dead” sees the second of three volumes hit shelves. While still being the middle part of a trilogy, “Clementine: Book 2” succeeds as a standalone work, satisfying the demands of both the Y/A and horror genres AND the spirit of Kirkman’s original series while never feeling like an aged-down carbon copy of it.
Written and Illustrated by Tillie Walden
Graytones by Cliff Rathburn
Published by Image Comics/Skybound CometClementine and her new friends are rescued by an island community led by an enigmatic doctor called Miss Morro, but just as Clementine’s scars are finally beginning to heal, she discovers dark secrets that threaten to tear her new life apart. Tillie Walden’s acclaimed trilogy set in the world of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead continues! For Fans of On A Sunbeam, The Last of Us, and The Walking Dead.
And that last part, the fact that the “Clementine” trilogy isn’t just “Lil’ Walkin’ Dead” seems to be something a noticeable chunk of the franchise’s fanbase are furious over. Or at the very least extremely vocal about. So it feels necessary to start off by pointing out how misguided that vitriol is.
Clementine originally appeared as the lead or co-lead character in 4 ‘seasons’ of the Telltale Games Walking Dead franchise, having been created specifically for the game. This probably made fans of the character MORE attached to her than if she had been introduced in the original comics or TV show. They weren’t just watching her or reading about her; they WERE her in many respects. So when the “Clementine” OGNs were announced, consciously or subconsciously, they were expecting the same type of experience: an interactive immersive journey they could control. Which isn’t how comics work. And they were expecting the same Clementine they got in the video game, which is not the direction Walden and Skybound Comet decided to take the series. The OGNs weren’t adaptations of the game chapters, or off-screen stories set between episodes of the game; the game is unnecessary prologue to the OGNs.
Comparing “Clementine” to the video game would be like comparing apples to car batteries, but contrasting it with the original Walking Dead comics is a much fairer endeavor. Walden’s Miyazaki-meets-Noah-Van-Sciver linework is certainly softer on the surface than Tony Moore or Charlie Adlard’s (or Adlard/Guadiano’s) approach, but only noticeable on direct comparison, and even then more of a different road leading to the same destination rather than a path to parts unknown. It certainly helps having Walking Dead alum Cliff Rathburn handling graytones; his work links Clementine’s world with Rick Grimes’s in a way more subliminal than overt, and the series is better for it.
And that’s actually a good description of how Walden handles these books’ connection with the larger “Walking Dead” world: subliminal. In the same way the best creators come on to a story or property already in progress, they honor the material by somehow making it their own, and proceeding from there. Any necessary bit of game/world backstory shows up, not as editorial footnote sending you to your longboxes or game consoles, but as a holistic part of the experience the book is giving you as you read it. All you need to enjoy “Clementine: Book Two” is in “Clementine, Book Two.” And there is so much to enjoy.
“Book Two” picks up just after the end of the previous volume. Clementine, Ricca, and Olivia have escaped Vermont and are still making their way north. Yes, there are walkers to avoid, and humans to trust (and not trust), and calamities ready to befall unsuspecting characters. After all, it IS ‘a tale of survival horror’. But surviving means different things for different generations. For the adults of the original story, it meant trying/succeeding/failing to get back to some kind of ‘normal’ like they had known for years. Their memories gave them a kind of purpose, a compass to follow. But for Clementine and her friends, where that compass leads is less obvious; that ‘normal’ life is a dream getting harder to remember every day.
Continued belowThe aspect of “Book Two” I keep thinking about most is Walden’s exploration of the youth perspective on this. Their world runs on utility and practicality. Practical knowledge continues to be power and empowering (like knowing what herbs have medicinal values, or how to properly set a prosthetic limb, or how big the Pacific Ocean is), but as time goes on, how much of that is still available? Intact? Accessible? Even intelligible to someone with a 2nd grade education that stopped almost 10 years before and who’s been too busy avoiding walkers to bone up on their vocabulary?
But as existentially horrifying as that sounds, Walden balances it in “Book Two” with some measure of hope. When we first meet Clementine in “Book One,” she’s certainly a survivor but one seemingly continuing out of spite as much as anything else. But over the course of that volume and definitely here, Walden shows Clementine’s growth from someone who survives to someone actually alive. Her acceptance of others and their love makes her stronger. She, Ricca, and Olivia aren’t just survivors because they avoid the walkers, but because of what they do that for: for each other. For a life together. For love, as long as they can. In very much the same way as she did in “On A Sunbeam,” Walden uses a found family dynamic to help her main character become a better person for herself and everyone else.
In giving the character of Clementine, a queer teenage girl trying to survive in a zombie-ravaged world where she might live past the age of 20, to Tillie Walden, a cartoonist whose focus on queer Y/A subject matter has already garnered her multiple Eisner and Ignatz awards, Skybound Comet achieved a level of comics publishing achievement on par with putting Walt Simonson on “Thor” or Frank Miller on “Daredevil.” The “Clementine” books continue to be not only entertaining genre comics, but also strong queer Y/A stories in a time where they are still more the exception than the rule.
