Image Comics’The Walking Deadis populated by dozens of multilayered characters, both heroic and villainous, with the series' bad guys being some of the most vile human beings in all of comics. But why areThe Walking Dead’s villains so much better compared to others? The answer lies in a shared hardship that none can escape.
Making its debut over 20 years ago in 2003,The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard, was an immediate hit that helped repopularize zombies in the public eye, with the multimedia franchise that was birthed from the original series ensuring that no fan will go without newWalking Deadcontent for long.
Receiving a few specials, one-shots, and spinoffs over the years, the world ofWalking Deadrecently concluded its young adult graphic novel seriesClementine, by Tillie Walden, with arecent Popverse interviewwith this talented writer/artist shedding light on whyWalking Deadvillains are so great:they’ve all been traumatized in some way by the “suffering” they’ve experienced.
According to Clementine writer Tillie Walden
Speaking about the concluding chapter of herClementinetrilogy, a story that follows the continued exploits of Clementine, the main character fromTelltale Games’The Walking Deadvideo game series, Walden explains how Book 2’s Miss Morro and Book 3’s The Gardener are characters whose villainy sprouted from a rather depressing place.
Revealing how she wanted to understand “what drives people to do harmful things," Walden explains how her relationship with her mother and her experiences with “girls who bullied me” shaped herClementinevillains, with the pain they caused Walden being “so much worse because they themselves are suffering so deeply,” even adding that it’s “understandable,” and “makes so much sense.”
Saying how she doesn’t know how to write “an evil guy beating people up” and how taking that route is creatively “a dead end,” Walden hones in on what makes an iconic antagonist work, with the idea ofa villain’s suffering and the way they deal with it being a huge reason whyevil inThe Walking Deadis so dangerous.
The Walking Deadcomic series ended in 2019 after 193-issues.
Continuing, Walden explains that when it came to writing characters like Miss Morro and The Gardener, she centered on “the female experience” and “female experiences as we age,” with the way people torment themselves and others as they grow older, telling fans exactly why these specificWalking Deadantagonists feel so different and richly textured as compared to most.
Whether having a particularly rough life, being physically, mentally, or emotionally damaged beyond repair, or simply not knowing how to deal with trauma that has utterly broken them,Walking Deadvillains are layered people whose suffering has led them to dark placeswhere they sink further and further until there is no light left.
Walden notes how no one sets out to be a bad person, withvillains like The Governorand his twisted love for his zombie daughter, Negan and his tragic past with his late wife, Lucille,Clementine’s Miss Morro and Gardener, and even the ever-constant zombie hordes all being examples of suffering personified.
So while the original Robert Kirkman-penned series has long since ended its record-breaking comic run, creators likeClementine’s Tillie Waldenare continuing to expandThe Walking Dead’s universe in meaningful ways by introducing all-new villains whose personal trauma has turned them into the kind of tragic characters worthy of this harrowing undead world.
