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If you've been invested in The Walking Dead for years now, you'd know that the real villains of the story aren't necessarily the walkers themselves, but the humans who took the zombie apocalypse as an opportunity to be terrible to other people. Who woulda thought?! 

This is an idea that writer-artist Tillie Walden has extrapolated on in her Clementine graphic novel series, following the character from Telltale's Walking Dead video game. While speaking to us at Popverse about the third and final book in the Clementine series, Tillie Walden explained the inspiration behind Book 2's villain, Miss Morro, and the villain of Book 3, The Gardener. 

Walden said, "But when I thought about villainy, when I thought about what drives people to do harmful things - I don't think my mom's gonna listen to this - I think about my mom. I think about, like, girls who bullied me. I think about all of these people, where I actually think the pain they've caused me is so much worse because they themselves are suffering so deeply, and it's so understandable, and it makes so much sense. It makes so much sense. And so I don't know how to write just like an evil guy beating people up, it really doesn't make sense for me. And it's also like, creatively, a dead end. It's like a dead end street. So I think, when it came to writing characters like Miss Morro, characters like The Gardener, it felt really natural to center the female experience and also to center female experiences as we age. The way we torment ourselves, the way we torment others, really changes as we get older. And I think that as I get older, I become much more interested in it. How we get stuck in our ways, how we don't set out to be bad, like did The Gardener set out to be bad? I don't think she did."

We love a complex, nuanced villain, particularly within the world of The Walking Dead. It only makes the conflict between them and the protagonist that much juicier.

You can read our full interview with The Walking Dead: Clementine author Tillie Walden here.

Clementine Book 3 is available now wherever comics are sold. 

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.