Snotgirl’s Leslie Hung and Bryan Lee O’Malley Talk Social Media, Soapy Goodness, and Snot

Fashion blogger Lottie Person has a secret: she’s not nearly as perfect as her blockbuster social media presence would suggest. Shocking, right? In Lottie’s case, that manifests in a poersonal life that resembles a osap opera on a rollercoaster, as well as in her volatile, barely controlled allergies.

Needless to say, at any moment, her perfectly crafted brand might collapse under a mountain of boogers or beneath an ocean of tears.

Bryan Lee O’Malley and Leslie Hung were kind enough to talk to us (again!) about the book, social media, and all things snot.

Lottie is an online superstar who isn’t quite so perfect in real life. I’m curious about your own experiences with social media. Love it? Hate it? Love to hate it?

Bryan: I used to use Twitter and stuff a lot more, but I’m slowing down. Unlike Lottie Person, I hardly do anything. Maybe when I’m on a trip or having an unusual amount of fun, I post a little more frequently, whereas Lottie is the kind of person who will plan her life around having stuff to post about. She’ll do whole events or trips just for the ‘gram.

Leslie: I don’t think it’s uncommon for people to feel a sense of inadequacy when they’re on social media. I’ve kind of gotten over the fear I’ve had of social media in the past year or so, but the pervasiveness of peoples’ online brands has definitely helped me appreciate face-to-face interaction a lot more as well.

And the book feels very current. How important is keeping up on trends?

Bryan: I think it’s more important for Leslie than for me. I just figure out the plot. She makes all the decisions for fashion and accessories and what kind of phones everyone has…

Leslie: I’d say it’s a bit of paying attention to trends and a bit of trying to stay true to each character’s personality and style. I like to think that the reason certain fashion bloggers rose to the top was because they had a willingness to experiment with classic and trendy pieces, brands, and silhouettes. For the second volume, I wanted to incorporate more of what I was enjoying in current fashion, as well as sticking to what I thought would look good on the characters and what I thought they’d naturally gravitate towards.

You’ve got a new colorist on the book, Rachael Cohen. Can you talk about what she brings to a book with such a distinctive color scheme?

Leslie: Rachael has been doing such a fantastic job, and I feel the transition to a new colorist has seemed quite seamless. I’ve definitely come to depend on her taste for certain parts of the color story, which is such a huge part of the comic overall. She’s been able to work with my ideas and help create what I think is truly a distinctive and lively story.

Bryan: Seeing Leslie’s vision come together with Rachael’s work is the best part of the job. I love how glossy and juicy it all is.

Bryan: This is way too big and complex an issue for one question, but yes, short answer, we’ve been thinking about it since the beginning. We have a lot on our minds. It isn’t a comic about current events per se, but all that stuff is there like background energy, this horrible creeping anxiety.

Leslie: The world is crazy, and we just try to deal with it by making a comic about snot.

Likewise, this being a largely female-led book with a strongly female creative team—how much is that a consideration when you’re writing and drawing Snotgirl? Or is Lottie’s world the wrong place to look for role models?

Leslie: Lately I feel there’s this idea that the only characters worth caring about are the aspirational ones, the characters whose thoughts and ideas are beyond reproach. I wanted Snotgirl to be different. I love the way flawed characters can reveal something about the way we think about the world. They shine a light on emotions we never really thought about or knew how to articulate. Lottie doesn’t seem like an aspirational character to me, but maybe that’s because we can see so much of her inner life. We know what a mess she is. She’s not cool.

Bryan: Our favorite characters are always the ones you love to hate, so we just made up a bunch of those. Like Lottie and her allergies, everyone in the series has this dual-sided personality with their own ugliness they try to hide.

The soap opera elements continue to get more fun, weird, and complicated. Are the various threads planned well in advance?

Bryan: We had a relatively loose plan at first, and we just took our time with the plot beats. We wanted the drama to grow out of the characters organically. I think in book two, it’s happening. The strange relationship between Lottie and Caroline moves forward bit by bit, but we also have these side situations, like what’s Virgil up to? Is Meg really going to marry that guy? Does allergy season ever end?

Leslie: I think the most fulfilling and fun part of creating the story and characters is being able to mix them up and have their relationships and emotions get more and more fraught. In the first volume we were planting the seeds, and now we really get to dig in to what makes a lot of the characters tick.

There’s no sense in this volume that Lottie’s story is coming to an end anytime soon. Any teases about what’s coming up in issue #11 and beyond?

Bryan: The next [single] issue comes out in August, and things are getting a little spicy. We’re increasing the spiciness.

Leslie: We’ve both been waiting[for] the opportunity to dive into Lottie’s background and family, as well as dig even deeper into the complicated relationships all the characters have. And, of course, more fashion and more snot.

Snotgirl, Volume 2: California Screaming is available May 29 in an exclusive Barnes & Nobel edition featuring a variant cover and a pull-out poster. Preorder now.