People took notice of Bryan Lee O’Malley with his earliest comics work, as artist on “Hopeless Savages: Ground Zero” and his graphic novel “Lost at Sea,” but it was his Scott Pilgrim series that established his reputation as one of the best cartoonists of his generation. The six book series was a bestselling phenomenon–inside and outside of the comics world–and was turned into the cult hit film “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” directed by Edgar Wright in 2010.
Since Scott Pilgrim concluded in 2010 with “Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour,” O’Malley made another graphic novel, 2014’s “Seconds,” and is currently at work on “Worst World,” a new graphic novel trilogy. In the meantime though he’s trying something new. Launching this week from Image Comics–just in time for the San Diego Comic-Con–is “Snotgirl.” Written by O’Malley and drawn by Leslie Hung, the book features Lottie, a fashion blogger and internet star with allergies, who decides to change her life.
Alex Dueben: You drew some of the miniseries Hopeless Savages: Ground Zero back in the day, but this is your first monthly comic. Why did you decide to make a monthly serialized comic?
Bryan Lee O'Malley: Making graphic novels is a slow process and it gets slower every year. I've been itching for years to do something with a different pace. Getting an issue out every month really lights a fire under you. Also just by the nature of monthly work, the storytelling gains an element of improvisation, so that's interesting to me on a creative level.
AD: How did you and Leslie Hung first connect? What sparked the idea of the two of you working together?
BLO: We've been friends for three or four years. She's super smart and talented, so I tried to coerce her into making comics for a living. She's done minicomics and other short things, but she wasn't that confident about writing a whole series, so she double-coerced me into the collaboration, and it's working well so far. We turned out to be very harmonious about almost everything. The core ideas came together very quickly. One of us said "fashion blogger" and one of us said "allergies" and that's pretty much how Snotgirl was born.
AD: How do you write a book for someone else? What’s the collaboration like?
BLO: I feel like a lot of the time there isn't much communication between comics writers and artists, and I was always leery of getting into a situation like that. I wanted this to be a real nitty-gritty collaboration. It was always going to be character-driven, so we talked these girls out for a long time before officially starting the series, and I think it really helped. We both have a strong feeling for the core of these characters, and it's impossible to separate "my" ideas from "Leslie's" ideas at this point. For a comic about shallow people, a lot of deep thought has gone into it. It's like what I was saying about improvisation–we know the characters, so each month is going to be about seeing how they react to different situations.
AD: What is it about fashion blogs, or fashion bloggers that you find so interesting?
BLO: I started getting into fashion and fashion blogs when I was working on Scott Pilgrim, searching for clothes for Ramona Flowers and Envy Adams to wear. That was in the mid-00s, and I feel like I've watched fashion blogging grow up. It's very plugged in to the larger fashion industry at this point. The bloggers are getting sponsored and it's becoming shady and corporate and secretive, so it's interesting on that level. And I see a lot of parallels between the fashion blogging world and the fandom world, with which I'm much more familiar, so it's less of a stretch than you might think.
AD: So how bad are your allergies? And do you find them a problem in LA?
BLO: Allergies have plagued me my whole life. When I moved to LA I thought my problems would be solved, but no, we're in a 5-year drought, everything's dry as hell, the pollen season never ends, and it turns out I'm far more allergic to dust, dogs, and cats, all of which I live with on a daily basis. I can't stay in and I can't go out. Leslie has it even worse than I do. I figure we think about it every day, it might as well be fodder for a comic.
AD: Snotgirl is a comedy, it’s a melodrama, but it’s also dark–and you seem to like balancing lots of different elements in your stories.
BLO: To me, life is dark and funny and dramatic all at the same time, so I can't help trying to bridge those things. I mean, trying to bridge that stuff is maybe the entire goal of my work. I see Snotgirl as primarily a comedy, but it's always walking that line. It's a comedy about living with anxiety and heartbreak and bad stuff happening.
AD: Reading Snotgirl, I was reminded of Raleigh in Lost at Sea, the first graphic novel you wrote and drew, which I loved, but that too is about isolation and rethinking one’s life.
BLO: My writing is always dependent on the main character's worldview. Scott Pilgrim was always about Scott's way of looking at the world through a video game filter. Lost at Sea and Snotgirl are about introverted protagonists, so they're driven by interior monologue as opposed to someone zooming around and being manic.
AD: Has the size of the page forced you to change how you write?
BLO: It has, but mostly in a superficial way. You can fit a lot more words per page, but you don't always want to! The big thing with Snotgirl is that the lettering takes forever - all that texting and internet stuff is complicated work. I've been very hands-on with it as we develop the overall vibe of the series.
AD: You’ve made a few posts on your blog about your next book and posted some character sketches. How is the next book coming? Anything you can say about it?
BLO: Like I said, making graphic novels is slow, and keeps getting slower. A year in, I'm still working out kinks in the story and haven't even officially started drawing pages yet.
AD: Do you have an ending in mind for Snotgirl? Is this an open-ended story?
BLO: It will have an ending, but right now it just has more of a general thrust. We know where we want to take things, but we don't have a specific timeframe. We're just hoping to keep following these characters along their paths, and hoping readers will enjoy the ride as much as we are.
AD: The first issue is out this week. What can people expect from future issues. Besides more snot, I mean.
BLO: You can look forward to other allergy symptoms other than snot. Maybe some hives and rashes. Other than that, it's top secret.
