I could not be more delighted to present this conversation with Kristen Gudsnuk! Kristen is the deeply hilarious cartoonist between Henchgirl and Making Friends, and she has unearthed some true childhood gems for us.
Pull up an imaginary chair as we talk Rumiko Takahashi, important fan clubs, and writing complicated kids.
Hi, Kristen! Thanks so much for agreeing to come hang out inside this imaginary Pokeball with me. There’s a cozy lounge space, a snack dispenser, and… hey, what’s in your personal Pikkimal lounge, anyway?
My personal Pikkimal lounge/Pikkiball is pretty similar to that in my book— everything is made of pillows and it automatically cleans up after me. But I would have a time-altering function, like that place in Dragon Ball Z where Goku goes to train for a year and only an hour passes. I guess I would also make it so that I don’t age there. Then I’d live there forever and become immortal hahahahaaaaaaaa nice.
You are one of the bravest people on the planet: I asked you whether you’d be open to sharing fanart with me and the world, and you pulled out this incredible childhood journal. When was this? What was on your mind? Please tell me everything.
Just looking at the incredible array of childhood art you sent me (I am privileged!!), it seems like you were already very invested in visual storytelling. Was it a big part of your life? What did comics mean to you?
Yes, in that I was OBSESSED with everything Rumiko Takahashi did. I also loved other manga, like Sailor Moon and whatever random things I could find (they were different times). But something about Takahashi’s art and writing really appealed to me, because part of her immense genius is the precise visual comedy of her expressions and gestures. Another thing that makes her work stand out is how character driven it is. Almost all the comedy comes from character. Like how Ryoga’s bad sense of direction, juxtaposed with his earnest quest for vengeance, makes him a relatable buffoon. She has great specificity with her characters and that’s what makes them all feel alive. And she pokes fun at their flaws constantly, and endearingly, and that’s probably something that leeched into my work too. Because when I was a kid I had maybe 6 volumes of manga total, and they were mostly her work. The first few Inu-Yashas, a Ranma ½ omnibus my dad got me from eBay (the first thing I ever bought online!!) and a short comic story collection called Rumic Theater. I read them over and over again. To the point where in one scene of my comic Henchgirl, I straight up quoted Ranma ½ (after Ranma eats the last pastry at school, Ryoga says “I will destroy your happiness”. I didn’t use the next line… but it’s such a funny line. Ranma pauses gravely and says, “Am I happy?” I don’t even know why but that’s still like, the funniest joke to me.)
I have a runner up to that joke, and it’s this line from another childhood comic you sent me: “She’s cute in the seahorse way.”
Haha! Tragic ending of this story, he cheats on her with her sister in a later comic and accidentally eats her when they kiss. It destroys her Jetson robot mother’s chrome heart. These are recurring characters are from a strip I did in high school about a girl who realizes all the popular kids are good at jump roping, so she vows to improve at jump rope. A kid in her gym class used to be a jump rope sensation so he decides to train her. But he’s a smoker and he has an asthma attack while demonstrating proper technique, so she has to give him CPR; after that, they’re an item. She never learns how to jump rope, but she does start a band, join the army, get glasses and realize she’s a genius when she wears glasses (but the world is too horrible to look at so she dramatically throws her glasses away.)
So I have to know – did you share your work with other people, in person or online? If you got feedback, how did it affect you?
I started doodling comics in my journal once I started reading manga around 6th grade:
I started making comics in earnest during history class in 8th grade to entertain my friends (otherwise I would fall asleep; it was right after lunch). Occasionally the comics touched on what we were learning about, but mostly, I had two ongoing strips; one was about a sad clown who was despised by the world, and another was about a set of low-rent deities. It had a character who was the goddess of spam email; sometimes she would talk in the vaguely comprehensible word salad poetry that you’d find in the body of such emails. And her best friend, who was the goddess of… being attracted to trees?? Dendrophilia? That was her name, if I recall correctly. She was always lusting after the forest. (This was the peak of humor in 8th grade.)
I made all my friends pledge fealty to me and join my fan club (I started my own fan club in 9th grade, and one of the stipulations for membership was that you had to say you don’t like cannoli. Most of my friends lied to my face and said “we hate cannoli” because we were bored and there was nothing else to protest against. But I remember my friend Sherri was like, “Kristen, you know I love you, but I can’t say I don’t like cannoli. I LOVE cannoli.”) I still let her read my comics though.
I just remembered, it was called The Anti-Cannoli League! But it was a front for my fan club! And it included making people sign something saying they deeply admire me (and hate cannoli).
Also in 9th grade, I went all-out and made, like, a 5-page comic and worked pretty hard on it, and it was basically me lampooning all the different kids in my class. The preppies, the nerds, the jocks, the juggalos, the goths (and of course the weirdos, aka me). The teachers and school administrators also received their share of derision. Then I photocopied it at the library and sold some of them to my classmates. I really wish I had at least a copy of it somewhere, because it was my first real comic, but sadly it’s lost to the sands of time. I remember thinking it was really hilarious when I gave one to the goth girl in my class and she got to the (what I intended to be comedic) teen angst poetry section, which was also a parody of the goth/emo subculture at my school, and she told me “you should be a poet. This poem is amazing.” It was something about the pain of life. I intentionally made it stupid, so I’m still confused but deeply flattered by that feedback. No one’s ever said anything so nice about any of the sincere poems I’ve written!
I’m a huge fan of your Making Friends series, in which a girl named Dany gets a magic sketchbook and decides to create a friend for herself (as well as a variety of other fun things, including but not limited to: a pile of money, magical transformation amulets, and the talking disembodied head of a ~*~deeply misunderstood~*~ anime character). They’re hilarious, weird, and gently disturbing in exactly the way I remember being as a kid. Like, give two Barbies to eight-year-old Gale and one of them will become possessed by an alien slime lord, that kind of thing.
So, first of all, I feel like these books tie in really well with the general theme of discussion: this kid’s passion for her favorite stories, and how she acts on that, really changes the trajectory of her life. (Although whether that’s for the better or not remains to be seen, preorder book 4.) What was your experience with fandom growing up? How do you think it affected your creative and personal development?
I think that people sometimes underestimate younger readers. Kids understand a lot, they’re ready to accept a lot of weirdness, and sometimes the stories that resonate with them the most are the ones that go to surprisingly bleak places (looking at you, Animorphs). So with that in mind, I’m really curious about your experience working on these books! Did you ever get any kind of pushback while developing the story? What kind of reception have you had from readers?
You know, that last thing about wanting to read more adult things when I was growing up… I think what I liked about anime was that while it was accessible for kids, it had the same stakes and drama as “grown up stuff”. So, when I make my books, I’m honestly trying to make a book my younger self would have liked. And part of that includes pushing some boundaries, because that stuff is so much more exciting and mind blowing as a kid.
Scholastic has been really good with helping me figure out where the line is. There were one or two things that I had to tweak, but not change, basically lessen in severity. But when it’s actually important to the story, they care more about making the story as good as possible. So basically, it sets me with the tantalizing goal of having to really earn those moments. Which is like… excellent advice anyway!
Some people have had issues with a few things. There’s an evil anime prince and some readers don’t like that I clearly love my evil characters and wish them the best. But tastes are different, and I like to think I’m making comics for people who have similar tastes as me. To illustrate a point, I’m someone who really loves sauerkraut… and licorice… and mayo. It’s not a huge deal for me if someone has different taste in stories, because I honestly see it as similar to liking certain foods or music. So when my stuff DOES connect with someone, I just think “they’re my people” and quietly like them more. But if someone isn’t “my people” I’m like, “Aw, good for you, you’re probably very well-adjusted.”
And, while my protagonist Dany isn’t evil, she’s an emotional raw nerve and definitely has her bad qualities. There’s a panel of Dany smiling evilly and saying “kill him” in the background when someone shoves her bully, and someone on Amazon reviews posted that panel and was very shocked and offended. I get it’s in poor taste, but that’s why I hand wrote it in smaller letters! But really, it’s more important to me to show the petty vindictiveness of our heroine. And I get that it’s offensive to say in a kids book, but I also didn’t want Dany to be a character to emulate, but rather, one to relate to. She’s a lot like my own seventh grade self, who wasn’t really a role model, just some random kid trying to get through the year, have someone to sit with at lunch (and a few backups in case they were out sick). I remember that year, my brain was going nuts trying to understand the various social traps and nuances endemic to middle school. And a lot of the conclusions I came to at the time, I later learned were dead wrong. But I don’t think it’s realistic to have a middle schooler who is already wise, mature, and kind, because from my recollection my peers and I were immature, cruel, hormonal idiots. With moments of grace, for sure, but mostly just overpowering amounts of cringe. So to be true to my own memories, I tried to at least evoke the complicated vibe of middle school.
Can I just say, with all sincerity, that “kill him” moment absolutely wrecked me. I laughed out loud in public like a maniac. Something about the relatable pettiness and the tiny lettering – that’s just good comics right there, and it does feel really true to the experience.
Speaking of… any advice for the Passionate Youths out there?
Yes! If you like to write— write down what you like about your favorite things and why. If you’re suddenly obsessed with an exciting new story, try to identify what it is that really hooks you. Write it down. (And send it to me. Hahaha, jk…. Unless..?) This exercise does two things. 1.) It’s very fun, and 2.) it helps you understand what you specifically like and relate to in a work. Knowing that is important for when you write your own thing. It’s like how after Texas Chain Saw Massacre came out, everyone copied the plot to the point where it’s beyond cliche now, but they missed the tonal choices and character moments that set the movie apart (it’s a masterpiece! But obviously, uhh, not at all for kids??!).
Writer, artist, or both, you should find the fun in what you do and seek it out. Because the difference, I think, between happy artists and unhappy ones is whether you actually get enjoyment from the act of creating itself. So make sure to hold onto that aspect because it makes creating long-term much more doable. And the only way to actually get better is to do something long-term. If you’re not great or even good at what you do yet, that just means you’re still learning. It doesn’t mean you’ll never be good or great at what you love. Because loving what you do leads to doing it more, which leads to improvement. (And you’ll really improve if you learn to find the fun in puzzling out what is wrong with what you’ve done and fixing it.)
What are you trying to get all your friends into now?
I’ve bought three different people vintage Jack Vance sci-fi paperbacks in the past few years, so I guess that’s my current endeavor. I would also say that everyone should watch the movie Golddiggers of 1933. It’s one of the last pre-code musicals and it’s almost sad how good it is because movies became much more censored the following year, thanks to Bank of America. (Yes it was their fault and I have the receipts.)
Anything else you’d like to mention? Upcoming projects, people you’d like to shout out, things I really should have asked but didn’t think to…?
I have a graphic novel I worked on with Emily Hampshire of Schitt’s Creek coming out, called Amelia Aierwood: Basic Witch! [ed: it’s out now!!!] I drew about… 30-something pages for it, and I really love it. It’s been a blast and Emily is the nicest, funniest person in the world.
I also have to tell you about my newest desk setup. I made myself a custom lap desk using random household items. I wood glued two boards together and then clamped a big pillow under them… taped a keyboard on there for my keyboard shortcuts (and I even have a phone holder so I don’t have to move my head as much to look up at whatever I’m listening to. Livin that Wall-E life!!) This allows me to lay on an arrangement of pillows while I work. So I guess I’ve actually brought part of my Pikkiball dreams to reality!!
Thank you SO much for your time!!
Thank YOU!!!!
Thanks again to Kristen for joining us – and thank you for reading!!
If you’re excited about her work and want to keep up with her, you can:
