20 comments — live from bluesky
Rob Clough · 30 · 2d ago I said this at the time this occurred on Bluesky, I said it again yesterday, and I will say it again now: I know a shakedown when I see one. Cleves, knowing she had zero legal leg to stand on, used the disgusting tactic of social media pile-on.
Derf Backderf · 21 · 2d ago I was suspicious at first, and said so, but tried to not form an opinion until I read the books. I read Cleves' first. I wasn't far into TIllie's before I had my answer.
Rob Clough · 25 · 2d ago Even if Cleves had been 100% right, the pile-on (tacitly endorsing people out to "end Tillie's career") was loathsome. I appreciate the close readings you and others have done to confirm that this was a shakedown.
Danielle Anne Baum · 9 · 2d ago I took it as cleaves was jealous of the attention tillie got and thought she deserved the critical acclaim for being the first... which was even half true as one of their relatives wrote about it not long after the women passed.
I also was surprised the publisher didn't tell cleaves to. shut up
To wrap this up (I promise). I was fascinated by these extraordinary accusations, the multi-platform social media assault, and the kneejerk response. I've never seen anything quite like it. As a comics author, it was unsettling.
So I spent (admittedly too much) time looking into it.
I really appreciate that you did such a deep dive on these accusations and I think you are uniquely qualified to examine them. so thanks!
Also despite the fact that Walden is my kid's favorite author AND I'm also a fan AND we have some friends in common I hadn't heard about ANY of these accusations until you shined a light on it, so thank you again.
Really? It was all over Bluesky when it happened.
I dont follow a lot of people
And to be clear, the blog I link to at the top of this thread is NOT mine. I didn't write it. It was written by @thene.bsky.social .
I messed up not clarifying that in the initial post. Crap.
As stated elsewhere, @barrydeutsch.bsky.social also gets a shout out for a deep dive into this.
Mine is more like a book report, frankly.
I have not discussed any of this with Tillie Walden btw. I don't know her. We are not in communication.
I had a short back and forth with Peggy at D&Q. Full disclosure.
This is just me defending a fellow comics creator against what I see as an unfair pile on.
And just to make this clear, I don't know Tillie. I met her once in passing. We have never collaborated or communicated. We don't share a publisher. I respect her work, but haven't read it, simply because I rarely read the comics of other creators. Need to keep my brain free so I can make my own.
can i ask, why are you opposed to being influenced by other comics but not other movies, books, music, art etc etc?
I know, I know. It's weirdly extreme. But y'know what? It works for me, and that's all that really matters.
you're missing out, man! comics are great. BUT i totally get it... and frankly love the results so keep it up and do not listen to me
I'm disappointed, and a bit shocked, by how many people swallowed Prof. Cleves accusations w/o even reading either book, let alone both, to see if this was valid.
I've read both. I've gone over the footnotes & citations.
The charges are NOT valid.
Cleves’ book is meticulously researched, as you would expect from a prof and a university press. But when I checked her source footnotes for scene after scene in Walden’s book, the source that was cited again and again was the Harry Sheldon Museum in Vermont.
That’s the same source Walden cites.
The Sheldon Museum houses the papers of Sylvia Drake, one of the 2 women. Tillie spent a year reading her diary and letters in the museum. The prof dismisses this effort as insufficient.
A year? Insufficient? Really?
Having done a few historical narratives myself, that doesn't fly.
Tillie didn't write an academic paper. She doesn't have to meet that rigorous standard. In fact, some of Tillie's book is fiction.
No one can claim ownership of what's in a museum archive.
To label that "my research" is ridiculous. OK, you read it,. with a historian's expertise. Great. TIllie read it too, with a storyteller's expertise.
Just because someone found the archive first is irrelevant. It's there to BE used.
For example, when I researched KENT STATE I relied heavily on what I found in the May 4 Collection in the Kent State Libraries. Other authors before (and since) have as well. I never for a second thought just because I dug through a box of papers that those papers were then “mine.”
The books cover the same story, but they are NOT the same.
Walden is a master storyteller. Her book is full of dialogue and emotion that is missing in Cleves' book. A particular entry from the diary that Cleves gives 1 sentence, Tillie turns into pages of conversation between multiple characters.
Nor does Cleves acknowledge AT ALL any of the visual research Walden did to recreate a small town in Vermont in 1820. Not just the village and topography, but the clothes, furnishings, machinery, transport etc.
There is none of this in Cleves’ book.
In all my books, especially KENT STATE and my new one THE DISSIDENTS, I spent as much time collecting visual research as I did researching people and facts & events. Cleves is not a visual storyteller, so this is no surprise. But to say that Walden did little research of her own is simply wrong.
cleves' research was only possible because locals told and preserved our own history for centuries. her work is meaningful to many of us but walden was our cartoonist laureate and was invited by the museum. we chose her. cleves doesn't get to "own" our history and shut us out over petty grievances
middlebury's had a kids' unit on this history for a while- when those kids want to write and talk about their own history is cleves gonna target them too?
www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/julia...
I’m an academic who does archival research and I agree. A year is plenty
And if I recall from the press release around the grant for this project, use of the Sheldon Museum archives seems to have been an essential required part of the project anyway
Yes, that is correct. Tillie received a grant from Vermont to do the book.
www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/b...
I knew nothing about this, but now I’m gonna go buy the comic for sure.
But Cleves's claim is that there were a number of episodes in Walden's book that couldn't have been recreated from just the material in that archive. I have no idea whether she's right about that, but that would seem to be the claim to refute:
Fair enough.
The bit about the ring differs from Cleves', and Tillie's footnote states hers is fictional.
The siblings deaths are indeed cited to Cleves. Prof ignores this. I would have cut that dialogue & anything else that was solely Cleves, especially after prof declined to read the draft.
I also question the "many details that are not in the Sheldon Museum" claim here. When I read Cleves' footnotes, the VAST majority were from the Sheldon. Many have different source abbreviations, but are, in fact, different items in the Sheldon.
Tille & Prof used the same source. It's not theft.
Then there are multi-page scenes in Tillie's book that are not in Cleves' Visual depictions of Sylvia's poetry, for example, rendered in signature Tillie Walden style. Dialogue throughout, and character interactions that are nowhere to found in Cleves' book. Ditto scenes of everyday life.
My memory from the discussion a month or so ago is that Cleves didn't tell Walden or D&Q at the time that she didn't read Walden's draft - she wrote back a couple sentences of encouragement, etc. So she didn't "decline," if I remember correctly, so they wouldn't have known she didn't read it.
My take was that Cleves was largely indifferent, but not opposed. But that she obviously had little interest in reading the draft is definitely warning sign.
I can't immediately find anything more specific than this bit from the Beat piece ( www.comicsbeat.com/professor-ra... ), so maybe I'm remembering more specifics than are in this quote, but I don't think Cleves gave them the impression she hadn't read Walden's draft. So D&Q/W wouldn't have known.
I went into this in the article but a) yes this is true, including a 22-page section that Walden credits solely to Cleves, but it's overall not a huge proportion of the book, and b) by a sad irony, one of Cleves's examples there is not even in Walden's book. The others were all credited to Cleves.
That said, even if Walden's only source for those episodes *was* Cleves's work, that doesn't make Walden's book an "adaptation" of Cleves's.
If Walden herself said in interviews that she "uncovered a chapter of queer history," that's disingenuous, but I suspect that was more a journalist's framing
I mean, the museum has had a unit for middle-schoolers up for more than a year; it's not as though the story was some hidden secret (even if Cleves's work was important in bringing it to light).
www.henrysheldonmuseum.org/charity-and-...
It's like Rachel didnt know what a citation was
Type this up and send it to the Comics Journal!
Absolutely. People get comics journalism awards for weaker stuff than this.
To be clear the blog is not mine. Only the thread is.
The blog was written by @thene.bsky.social
This whole thing is starting to look more and more likes Cleves is just enraged at the idea of having anyone else release a book about the same subject, as if she has sole claim over a historical narrative.
My guess is the real story is that the archivists at the collection knew what they had and invited in scholars and artists to share it.
That is indeed what happened. The museum confirms this.
That is some solid librarian shit and I am so proud of them for it.
Probably, and yeah that’s how it works because that’s how history is preserve—multiple people telling the story, whether as an academic paper or dramatic narrative. I guess Cleves didn’t get the memo.
Yes, Walden's comic was commissioned by the Vermont Dept of Humanities in conjunction with the museum, and at some point someone handed Walden a copy of Cleves's book. I should maybe have put that in the article. This wasn't Walden being suddenly inspired to dive in to the HSM archive.
It does highlight how mundane, routine, and grounded in the archive itself the creation of the comic was.
This wasn't an opportunistic cash-in on a monograph. It was a further effort by the archives to highlight their holdings.
i think she got really mad about walden saying in an interview that walden thought no one had read 100% of the available materials and walden further thought she, walden, had peraps gotten closer to doing so than anyone else. that seems to have been cleves' rage button, nothing else mattered
Which, I mean, if you are gonna be raged buttoned by that, I hate to see what you do to the guy that cuts in line at Disneyland.
Does anyone know why Cleve's kept talking about movie options and rights when complaining about this? I had a look but couldnt find anything about any of Walden's work even being mentioned as possibly being optioned anywhere but kept seeing posts about the intention being witholding movie money.
mostly cause she's an idiot about how comics work. I think she conflated d&q with marvel/DC/image in her head... and just assumed that it would be made into a movie... and cause that's what she wants to happen and thinks she'll get rich off of it.
Her husband is a guy in tech, and that is classic tech guy mentality tbh
I read (and really enjoyed) Walden's book. Haven't read Cleves. Her sour grapes are keeping me away from her book.
My estimation was that Walden erred grossly by declining to disclose how much she relied on Cleves’ research, and that Cleves erred less grossly by exaggerating how much of Walden’s work of adaptation was theft.
The OP shows that Walden did cite Cleves and acknowledged her work fairly thoroughly.
Cleves showed, in my opinion, enough examples of her not doing so when discussing her own research for me to have made that estimate.
She did not show that in many other people's opinions, including copyright lawyers, so...
As I mentioned in my original comment, historical facts are clearly not protected by copyright laws.
So Cleves HASN'T shown enough, then? Because that's all she's got that isn't completely and utterly contradicted by actually looking at Walden's work instead of what Cleves claims about Walden's work?
When two artists/academics/writers come across the same enticing but mostly untold story, this often happens. Too bad it devolved into this.
Thank you for going through all of this!!
I had not heard about these books, or this controversy, until I read this thread. Thank you for this – it’s a fascinating interrogation of the connections between history and storytelling.
Same! I’ll be picking up the Walden book soon. Love her work.
thank you for doing this... it was something I wanted to do but I'm a bit biased cause tillie and I were the same class at cartoon studies.
cleaves blocked me on here when I asked her why she didn't talk to d&q first and why she didn't read the arc she was sent... only to find out later
that she did send an email to d&q offering a couple of corrections and otherwise saying it was great (according to d&q)..
Yeah, I messaged a bit with Peggy about this and got the details.
ohhh that sounds interesting. honestly so much of what cleaves and her followers said was such garbage to me... from the complaining about the title to the fact that tillie did her own research. maybe not all the same dang
places cleaves claims to have seen, but... it's what I told countless history students to do as a librarian. find books and back track every citation you can. read the og sources you can the number of times I had students and professors fund errors in citations I lost count of
if i had a million dollars, i’d commission Walden to publish her process notes on this novel in a more formal way than just as an online bibliography, tbh. as a companion piece to the GN. but that’s the kind of nerd i am lol.
@dominocomics.bsky.social this might interest you since I saw talking about the situation earlier
i read this! i still think its an adaptation and thats not a big deal. i did sit down and read waldens book and admire it, i need to read cleaves now. movies adapt a source and change tones, and thats fine.
That Walden saw Cleves material and used some of it with citation does not make that use an adaptation.
it shares the same title and cites cleves work more than any other source, and significantly bases on chapter on it. and i admire the book, doesnt feel like a disservice to book to note the obvious.
The post indicated that the primary source for Walden's work is the Historical Society that held the papers. The OP made an estimate that 10% of the graphic novel relied on Cleves and cites it.
yes but those numbers dont sync u with what we can all see in the biblio & book itself & a basic respect for decency towards another author. ive read the post, now multiple times and dont see a convincing case. i respect your opinion, im clearly in the minority in my view.
We can definitely agree to disagree. I don't see Walden as lacking in respect, but maybe not understanding the mores here.
no i dont see walden as doing anything wrong, i think packaging/promotion and perhaps a page in book that isnt on internet talking about sources could have gone a long way.
I agree completely.
what does 'adaptation' mean to you exactly?
something that can only exist with another work being made first and that relies on that work above others, even if it transforms that work significantly or reaches different conclusions. having dane title doesn’t help.
(Not having read either) I think it’s arguable that it doesn’t rely on that work above others, as the cleves book seems to only be reflected in a small portion of the Tillie book. Maybe it’s fair to say that that 10% adapts portions of the cleves book but wouldn’t imo make the whole an adaptation
More that it’s informed by the prior book, since there’s so many differences between the two including focus. I do think having the basically same titles was a gigantic mistake. We’re not in “Napoleon” territory where there’s already a million books on the subject with the persons name as title.
yes this historical
story has hardly any sources other than cleves and the archive, no? thats why comparing this to other historical works that use a main source doesnt make sense
Any historical fact is automatically public domain from the very instant the fact is discovered. Facts can't be copyrighted, period.
"this historical story has hardly any sources other than cleves and the archive"
What gave you that impression, and what has given you the impression that an archive of hundreds of letters and diary entries couldn't be the "main source" over a different text?
*same
That definition of adaptation sounds like a work that pulls from multiple sources is also an adaptation of all of those sources... Like if you wanted to do a graphic novel about George Washington, you wouldn't be allowed to use any existing Washington biographies as sources.
no one is saying its not allowed.
Okay, sorry, that was the wrong way to phrase it.
But would you consider a George Washington graphic novel an "adaptation" of a bunch of different Washington biographies if the cartoonist used those books as sources?
if one was used a ton (and heavily in one chapter) and they shared same title, i think youd need to figure out how to address that, yeah.
But what if two sources are used "a ton"? In that case, do you consider it an adaptation of both those sources?
This is not a hypothetical question. Walden arguably used Sylvia's diaries and letters more than she used Cleves's book.
I see. I don't agree with your broad definition of adaptation, but I understand what you mean now (I think!).
Specifically you wouldn't be allowed to do such a thing without people saying it was An Adaptation Of Whichever Single Source Was Cited Most Often rather than something that drew on multiple sources.
this happens all the time tho and authors make clear wgen they are indebted to a specific work, beyond an online biblio. when they dont, there is pushback, which is warranted.
okay but you have read the non-online thing though right. like the thing that says she was able to do what she did because of Cleves' book and specifically calls out the biggest reliance on Cleves being about their childhoods???
Someone recently counted and made a speadsheet, which is possible because Walden provided an explanation of her sources and process for every single page of her work. The graphic novel statistically does not rely on Cleves' book over other sources.
could this book and the specific chapter that is very based in cleves exist without cleves book?
Short answer. Yes. 90% of both books use the same archive, the Harry Sheldon Museum in Vermont. No one "owns" that material. The archivists helped both authors, probably Tillie more than a history prof. One 22-page chapter out of a 264-page book is based on Cleves' research, and is cited as such.
It's mainly about the families of both women and their childhoods. As I wrote earlier in the thread, I would not have included that chapter, not without express permission from Cleves. I avoid 1-source scenes, if possible. 3 sources for every scene is a good standard. Not always possible.
ok would you as an author feel strange if a work heavily relied on your earlier work for one chapter and used same name as your book? i dont understand why that doesn’t seem like a thing anyone would be upset by.
yes but isnt the main issue that cleves work guided walden through the archive?
I would imagine the museum staff and the archivists guided Walden through the archive. That's their job!
Remember also, Tillie was recruited by a Vermont History director to make this book. She didn't just stumble across Cleves' book and say, "think I'll steal this story."
and one 22 page chapter in any work is pretty significant, i dont know any way in which it wouldn’t be.
Cleves didn’t compile, organise or manage the archive, the archivists did — the bit she can be given particular credit for is the work outside it. Much as Walden should be given particular credit for covering aspects of the archive Cleves did not as well as the fictionalised aspects.
Cleves is cited often, but frequently in the sense of "I learned about x detail of a family member from this letter, y economic context from this historical society in Vermont, and z number of children from the family tree in Cleves' book" for one page.
im sorry, just trying to make sure i follow, you’re saying walden only uses cleves on one page?
They're not saying that but hey just for the record here is a link to one page of Tillie's online bibliography (which for the record seems too involved to include in the book itself the way Derf suggests)
But I also don't think any citation of visual reference should count towards the argument that the book couldn't be considered an adaptation. It does document work Walden did that Cleves would not have to consider, however
No I'm saying that's an example of Cleves being a source used for a given single page. The format of the graphic novel is that each page is a single vignette, so Walden's massive bibliography does a series of writeups of all the specific sources most relevant to one vignette/page at a time.
So, even if Cleves is *a* source for like a third of the total pages, Cleves is rarely the ONLY source for a given page/vignette. Sometimes Cleves mentions a thing that Walden was independently also told about by the archive curators, so Walden cites them both for the same fact.
Appreciate this thread, which clears up a bunch.
:)