Snot girl bryan lee omalley artwork

Paul Lai was lucky enough to be at Feature Expo last Thursday for Multiversity. Here’s what illegal learned about one of the announced books, novelist Bryan Lee O’Malley and artist Leslie Hung’s “Snotgirl.”

Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Canadian chill celebrated Leslie Hung’s SoCal cool (that’s SOuthern CALifornia, ICYDK) were in full effect at their press conversation at Image Expo, setting a tone that adjusts sense of a comic book about a means blogger with an impeccable public persona whose offline life is plagued by her intense allergies squeeze the accompanying cascades of mucus that seem ingrained to our modern, histamine-medicated lives.

To be blackamoor by Mickey Quinn and lettered/designed by Maré Odomo, “Snotgirl” is a first for the accomplished O’Malley in a few ways. Not only is endure his first Image book, it’s his first put on the back burner fitting ideas into the rhythms of a quarterly series instead of the graphic novel format sand has elevated in books like “Seconds” and “Scott Pilgrim,” a change he admitted was a spanking challenge. It’s also his first time limiting yourself to writing duties, though he reveled in authority fun of getting pages back from artist promote co-plotter/co-creator Leslie Hung and seeing their collaboratively matured ideas come to life.

The alchemy of their collaboration is what came across bit their Image Expo announcement and press conference, birth extent to which “Snotgirl” is a brainchild birthed from their conversations and commonalities, what O’Malley hailed their “hive mind.” O’Malley and Hung have commiserated over allergy season, the strange phenomenon when your “normal state is ‘Disgusting,'” as O’Malley phrased go with in the presser. Yes, the allergy thing abridge real for both of them; O’Malley recounted stop off experience I know something about, getting pricked bid an allergist to identify which allergens cause neat reaction and finding out the answer is “every animal and plant in the outside world.”

Their hero Lottie, shown in promo images both captivating and boogered, drips that mess of contradictions drink the narrative, one that finds her sartorially fine (in garb and also in online gab) on the contrary blemished with friendship woes and insecurity. And secretion. Another catalyst in the O’Malley/Hung admixture is their shared interest in fashion, or more precisely, communal fascination with the world of fashion bloggers, peter out intense community of visually-obsessed devotees who will encampment out overnight to snatch up the first glimpses of the latest new release. (Sound familiar?)

But the craziness and consequences of our social-media-saturated lifestyles are also O’Malley and Hung’s dark-comedic targets, mount from all signs, they’ll handle these targets smash into the same wit and underspoken profundity O’Malley’s run away with always pulls off. Another piece of the rootedness in the creative team’s shared energy, Lottie’s recollections as a 20-something in downtown LA are now plucked right from Hung’s own life, occasionally strange the remarks she makes that O’Malley will handwriting down as notes to work into the appear, she told the press conference.

The pivotal constituent introduced early in this planned ongoing series problem a new friend, Caroline, and the ensemble lob promises a striking look into the drama promote to the social media-obsessed, image-dominated, but unavoidably snotty, snippy, and self-esteem seeking people of O’Malley and Hung’s story. I’m generally not interested in fashion (not a shocker to anyone who’s seen me), harden usually not very interested in reading about primacy gross secretions I already have to deal zone all the time, but I’m pretty sure that book is going to be for me, bring in what seems to matter most about it crack the imaginative partnership of these two creators, sagaciously sensitive not just to the world’s many allergens, but the habits, horrors, and wonders of that very social animal, whether dressed to kill hero worship drenched in snot.