Graphic Novel Review: Clementine Book 1 by Tillie Walden

Posted on May 24, 2022 at 7:32 am by Gene Ambaum

Clementine Book 1 by Tillie Walden. Grey tones by Cliff Rathburn. Skybound Comet / Image, 2022. 9781534321281. 256pp.

Set in the world of The Walking Dead, Tillie Walden’s new graphic novel centers on Clementine, a seventeen-year-old who has been through some serious shit in the seven years after the zombie apocalypse. She’s hardly willing to accept help, though she does get some from a dentist turned prosthetist in an Amish community where her brief visit is quite the topic of conversation. She leaves as soon as she is able to and meets Amos, a young man heading to Vermont as part of his Rumspringa. He hopes to help build a homestead on a mountain peak there, and maybe to fly in an airplane. Clementine sees him as too naive and nice to handle the realities of life in the wider world, and they end up traveling together. In Vermont they become part of what seems like it will be an ill-fated attempt to build a mountain settlement, helping twins who refuse to give their names (the group calls them Left and Right) and Ricca, whose eyesight is failing. Things are always about to go wrong (and many things do), but Clementine has clearly made a few friends and, despite how that has gone for her in the past, it was more than enough hope to carry me through this book, which offers so much more than most zombie novels and graphic novels. (Walden’s other graphic novels are all amazing too!)