Popverse's top stories

• What is Superman saving movie audiences from? Meaningless superheroes and bad movies, says DC Studios chief James Gunn
• How do you go about creating a realistic villain in The Walking Dead? "Suffering," says Clementine's Tillie Walden
• The Stranger Things Instagram broadcast channel just came back online after 18 months of silence - to tease a season 5 trailer of the Netflix hit

What are the key ingredients of a coming-of-age story? Traditionally, the bildungsroman is built around a young protagonist grappling with their personal values against the values of their culture. Think along the lines of Jane Eyre speaking out on behalf of her own humanity against the rigid gender and social norms of her time. Not surprisingly, a lot of coming-of-age stories, with or without zombies, involve at least one scene set in a school, and it was this key element that writer-artist Tillie Walden wanted to slip into her Walking Dead graphic novel series, Clementine. 

Clementine Book 3 is out now from Skybound, and it contains a plot point that Walden had been planning to get into the story for some time now. Speaking with Popverse, Walden said, "There's only one plot point that I came up with way back in book 1 that I wasn't able to do all the way until book 3, which was that I really wanted Clementine to go back to school. At some point I wanted her to sit at a desk with a teacher at the front of the room and learn something. And I knew that this being a Walking Dead series, it wouldn't be okay for me to just have a whole book about, like, [singsongy] ‘My Day at School.’ I would have loved to do that, I love a low-key slice of life book. But I was hell-bent on getting it in there."

Book 3 is the final installment in Walden's Clementine graphic novel series. And it's sweet to see Clementine get the chance to finally go to school, after everything she's been through. In some ways, Walden's journey to get Clementine to school in her book is not unlike how many of us go through life. We might have a clear idea of where we want to end up, but rarely are we able to get there in the way that we had originally planned. Of course, there is that old school adage: it's about the journey, not the destination. 

Clementine Book 3 is available now wherever comics are sold. 

Read our full interview with The Walking Dead: Clementine author TIllie Walden here.

Get ready for what's next with our guide to upcoming comics, how to buy comics at a comic shop, and our guide to Free Comic Book Day 2025.