3 Questions With… Tillie Walden
Just in time for Halloween! A new Clementine/Walking Dead book that your teen will love, even if they don’t care about Zombies.
I first came across Tillie’s work with On A Sunbeam. It’s an almost 600 page sci-fi story about Mia, who joins the crew of a maintenance ship in the hopes of reconnecting with a lost love. It’s a wonderfully intimate story despite what you might guess from the backdrop. It is extraordinary.
A bit later, I saw she was doing a book called Clementine, set in the world of The Walking Dead. It seemed like an odd choice to me. I read it and of course was delighted. Once again, a wonderful story much more about the characters than the backdrop.
Among other works, Tillie has also worked with indie-pop, twin sister icons, Tegan and Sara. If you’ve seen the Lego Movie, you know their infectious song, Everything is Awesome. Tillie teamed up with them to do two books based on the twins Junior High years. While I certainly was not the target audience for this series, I absolutely loved it. I also gifted it to someone who it was intended for and can confirm that everything was awesome for them too.
Tillie has a new Clementine book that just came out. The 3rd and final in the series. Do your teen (and yourself) a favor and check it out, and dive into Tillie’s impressive catalog of work.
Why Comics?
I truly can’t think of another medium that would allow me to express myself the way I want to. There’s something really unique about comics – it’s both still and moving, slow and fast, huge and little. Comics are a medium of juxtapositions, and I feel like that’s why I thrive in it. I love drawing a sweeping vista, but I love drawing a close up too. I love a single panel that is beautiful, but I love a full story that means something. I also love that in comics you don’t have to be precious – each panel doesn’t need to be perfect, it’s all about how the panels interact, that’s where the real energy comes from.
What was a book/comic you fell in love with as a teen?
The first comic that really captivated me was Buddha by Osamu Tezuka. I found the first volume at a used bookstore, I still remember the specific shelf it was on (the bottom one in the comics section.) I think I was about 10 when I found it. It’s an 8 volume series about, you guessed it, Buddha, but Tezuka also inserts his own characters in it, and sort of bends the history to his will. But it’s a serious comic, for the most part, and I loved the tone. It was sad, and epic, and intimate. And the drawing mesmerized me because the characters were cartoony but the backgrounds were realistic. This combination totally inspired me. I read, and reread that series more times than I can count. I see a lot of it in my work, especially my early work. Truly one of the most defining comics for me.
What are you currently working on?
I am working on my first historical graphic novel! It’s a book about two women, who were very much real, who lived together in Vermont in the 1800s. They are one of, if not the, earliest recorded same sex couples in American history. Their story is wonderful, and has been an opportunity to write about and think about life in New England in the early days of this country. There’s a lot of death, a lot of humor, a lot of change, a lot of love, and a lot of fetching water. I’m drawing it on a grid which I haven’t done since Spinning, and I’m really enjoying it. Grid comics are some of my favorite. It’ll be out next spring from Drawn and Quarterly, and it’s called Charity and Sylvia.
You can find Tillie online
