Tillie Walden is one of my favorite comics artists, a multiple Eisner Award winning talent and current cartoonist laureate of Vermont. I loved her books Spinning and On a Sunbeam, and I also had the pleasure of interviewing her a few years back as part of The Comics Alternative podcast. I was very surprised to see that she was going to be working on a book based in The Walking Dead franchise, and I bought it a few years ago but only got to actually reading it now. Clementine is based on a character from the franchise's video game series. She is a young woman/teenager who is living in a world over-run by zombies. When this book begins, she is a loner, and she wears a prosthetic leg in place of the limb she lost. And, as you can see in the except below, she is used to taking care of herself.
Her isolated demeanor gets seriously challenged when she happens up some Amish folk on a trail, and she ends up partnering up with a young man named Amos who is on his way to Vermont as part of his rumspringa. It turns out it is easier to ride in a wagon than walk all that way, but when they get there, things are not what they expected. I don't want to spoil much, but they end up trying to make the best of things in the cold, harsh winter conditions, and there are many complications and obstacles.
What I think this book does best is use the backdrop of the zombie apocalypse to explore human beings, how they act, and what they are capable of. This is a book with lots of moral and ethical dilemmas that also explores people's relationships to each other and why they may or may not trust them. Clementine and the others are all complex, compelling characters, and watching how they relate, strive to survive, and potentially look out for each other is very engaging. All of this is further enhanced by the expert storytelling and character depictions. This book is a definite page-turner that is tough to put down. Good thing this is the first book of a trilogy, so I will need to track down the rest of her story.
It can be tough to please the audience of an existing character, especially one that belongs to as large and passionate a fanbase as The Walking Dead. I have no experience with the video game version, and I very much enjoyed this book. Furthermore, all of the full reviews I have read about this book have been positive. In a starred review for Library Journal, Tom Batten summed up, "Walden’s knack for character development and unique perspective result in a tale perfect for diehard fans of The Walking Dead, as well as newcomers." David Harper wrote that the book "finds a singular talent threading a needle, making this graphic novel feel like a Walden original and a natural continuation of this character’s journey."
Clementine, Book One was published by Image Comics, and they offer a preview and more here.
