Issue 32: The Wall of Honor, Voyager Homecoming issue 5 reviews, and a live reading!
Hey, what’s going on?
No really, what’s going on?
Someone tell us, because the everything is too much.
NEW STUFF
Soooo if you’re wondering what the heck that header image is… that is us on the Starfleet Wall of Honor from the new Starfleet Academy show!
Our lovely friend, Eric Glover, who is on the writing staff of the show, got us added to this wall. Our names didn’t pass the legal clearance, possibly because we are real people and they didn’t think they could, or had time to, get us to legally clear our names for use (the lawyers checking probably had no idea we even worked on Prodigy, and so they might have already had the clearances needed). But knowing Tilly’s book Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of The Matrix, and how the entire franchise is Trinity’s transition journey… and knowing our love of Superman and Lois Lane… he got us up there as the next best thing. And we both made Admiral?! Nice.
We are losing our minds, this is the most amazing thing!
Tilly’s photo is much clearer because Eric took the photo on set as it’s more difficult to see, but if you watch carefully you might spot it on the bottom row, third column from the right. Susan’s is sort of right in the middle and appears in a lot more shots if you look for it (and she’s right beneath our dear friend, Long Away producer and Star Trek science consultant Erin Macdonald!).
That we are up there with all these legendary characters from Trek history, and the names of the people working on Starfleet Academy… it’s too overwhelming. We have no words. And our job is words! Nevertheless.
Thank you, Eric. This means the absolute world to us.
Issue five, the finale of Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming is out today!
Here’s its first (non-spoilery) review, from Comic Book Resources! “…A truly rewarding final issue, giving all Voyager fans all the closure that they could have ever asked for, and then some. This was a very sweet miniseries, with a lot of great moral quandaries, and all of the impossible decisions that make Star Trek such a wonderful franchise”
Brian Cronin
Be warned, if you click through on these following reviews Homecoming issue 5, they are very spoilery!
9/10! “Credit writers Susan Bridges and Tilly Bridges for tightrope walking through that delicate balancing act of plot resolution versus character development. It’s easy to understand why the TV series didn’t go there as it takes up nearly half of this final issue. But the writers understand that fans were once robbed of this closure, and they weren’t about to let it happen again.”
“Kudos to Susan Bridges and Tilly Bridges, who completely nailed this miniseries. I am hopeful that this excellent writing team will … get more work in the IDW Star Trek universe … I would welcome any further VOY stories from their imaginations.”
Avery Kaplan
“…words cannot truly express how happy I was when I closed this comic and felt that the perfect ending had arrived. … I hope the entire team involved are invited back – by IDW…”
Villordsutch
“…a beautifully written epilogue that is likely to thrill long-time fans. … It’s brilliant, full circle storytelling … the fan pleasing moment of the century finally seeing these tender moments … beautifully underscored by Janeway’s narration.”
Neil Vagg
Well dang, we’re well chuffed. Endings are hard, especially second endings that a lot of fans have been waiting thirty years for. It meant so much to us that we got to tell this story, and Janeway’s end speech was one of the most intimidating things we’ve ever had to write. It sums up what Starfleet and the Federation mean to her, and what Star Trek means to us.
Hopefully we did the characters justice.
Some late reviews of Homecoming issue 4 came in recently, so here’s those, too!
9.6/10! “Writers Susan and Tilly Bridges maintain the story momentum with a cargo hold full of action (including a full-on space battle), but the writers never forget the key ingredient to a good Star Trek story: character interactions, problem solving, tough choices and dialogue as razor sharp as a well-honed Bat’leth.”
Adam Koppel
And here’s a very nice video review (the Homecoming portion starts at 1:27) that rates the book “One gooey Boothby.” It’s highly complimentary!
We were also super honored to be the first ever guests on the Earth Girls are Angry podcast! We had a super great conversation about partnership, love, creativity, how those things converge, and trying to make the world better through our art. It doesn’t revolve around any specific project, but is more about us as writers (and wives) and how similar our writing and romantic partnerships are. Listen anywhere you get your podcasts!
We previously mentioned that Tilly was interviewed for an upcoming book, Trans in the Machine, about the intersection of transness and the cyberpunk genre. We don’t know how much of that interview will appear in the book, but it’s a cool topic regardless. The crowdfund for that is now officially open, if you want to check it out.
The graphic novel that was supposed to be announced by the end of January… still has not been. We’re still in regular contact with the publisher and things are progressing, but there’s been some shuffling of folks in their marketing department as well, which may be part of why there’s a slight delay.
Trust that as soon as it happens, we will talk about it way too much, both here and on social media! You will not be able to miss it!
We also hear our other graphic novel that's out in 2027 might be getting announced soon? Eee!
And of course, we’ve got copies of all Voyager Homecoming issue 5 covers up in our ko-fi shop (they are going fast), most covers of issues 2-5, and even a few complete series sets (these are going really fast). There’s also still paperback and hardcover copies of Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of The Matrix. And also!
We’ve got a line on some copies of Voyager Homecoming issue 1, which has been almost impossible to find for a while now. So if you missed that, keep an eye out, they’ll pop up in the store as soon as we have them in hand!
WHAT WE’RE WORKING ON
Our pitch got accepted into The Joy Who Lived festival!! Our original pilot Robo Waitress Assassins is presently slated for a live cast reading on April 10 at 1:30 pm pacific! It’ll be at the Hudson Theater here in Los Angeles, and live-streamed so you can watch it from anywhere! And ninety percent of all ticket sales go directly to us and the cast, which is great and wildly unheard of. Of that 90% we get, we're giving 75% to our five cast members. Love that they'll get paid for it!
It’ll star Griffin Kelly (from Long Away!) and Jacks McLaughlin as the two leads. We wrote up a casting notice for the other roles, because we need to cast them but also because a lot of trans and nonbinary actors submitted to the festival because they wanted to be in shows, even if they didn’t have a show of their own. So it’ll have almost an entirely trans and nonbinary cast! In fact, likely the only cis person in the reading will be Susan, because there’s one character we feel really does need to be played by someone who’s cis. Tilly will be the narrator, reading all the action and slug lines. Stay tuned for more info as we move through rehearsals, and when and where you can get tickets!
We’re waiting on concept art from the artist who wanted to work with us, and we’ve come up with a concept that we’re really excited about. We’ll be writing up the pitch for that soon.
We were asked to contribute to another comic anthology, Systemic volume 2. It’s full of stories about the ways people run into conflict with societal systems that harm them, which is really cool. We were asked to contribute to volume 1 last year, but it was on fairly short notice, and this is an anthology where we have to manage our entire short (oversee the art and colors and lettering) and turn in a completed final short, and we just didn’t have the time to get that done with all our deadlines and Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming press.
But this year we’ve got a lot of advance notice, and (amazingly!) another artist mentioned she’d love to work with us on something, and really loved our idea, so she’s off doing concept art on that while we get to revising the script.
We’ll let you know when its Kickstarter is up, but here’s the one from volume 1 if you want to check it out!
An editor we love is doing some consulting for a company that’s kind of new to comics and was looking for pitches on a certain theme, and asked if we’d be interested in sending a few short pitches, so we’re getting those ready, too!
And the graphic novel whose announcement truly is coming any day now, has all colors and lettering done! We just did notes on the last chapter of the book for both of those, and we also collected material for the backmatter (additional stuff on a few extra pages in the back of the book, because books are printed in four-page increments, and after the comic itself and the credits page, etc, there were three blank pages to fill).
We think the only thing we have left to do on it is the final print proof, where we check for any missed (or new) errors, and then we’ll actually be done with it (save for any press we have to do).
It should be out in August! Oh, and also out in August will be the collected trade paperback of Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming! We’re delighted that it sold well enough to warrant that, and it’ll be the entire story in one volume. Yay!
TRANS TUESDAY UPDATE
We got into talking about GENDER EUPHORIA, and how it’s not just the opposite of dysphoria, but is sometimes an even better indicator of transness. And it’s something cis people can experience too!
After that, we began our annual TRANS REPRESENTATION IN MEDIA report, covering trans and nonbinary representation on screen and behind the screen, and jokes at trans people’s expense, in every movie and tv show we watched over the course of 2025. It’s a huge undertaking to constantly be writing notes on everything you see, but if we don’t get a picture of where things are at, and what’s done well and what’s not, things will never get better. Part 1 is out now, and covers films, including “The Day the World Blew Up," "Kpop Demon Hunters," "National Anthem," "O'Dessa," "Saving Buddy Charles," "We're All Going to the World's Fair," and more!
Also! The entire run of Tilly's Trans Tuesdays podcast episodes are now on YouTube, and new episodes are going up there as well!
RECOMMENDATIONS
We’re not quite sure what to make of The Abandons. It has a lot going for it, but it didn’t quite connect with us like we wanted it to. It’s a western on Netflix, which just premiered a month ago and was already canceled. Isn’t our modern media landscape fun?!
But one thing that’s certain is that it’s an absolute delight watching Lena Headey and Gillian Anderson absolutely hate on each other in a western setting. And it’s pretty dang rare to see any middle-aged woman get a role of prominence at all, much less in a western, much less two of them, very much less two of them who are so great at what they do.
And the show hasn’t shied away from parts of westerns a lot of others won’t touch, like racism and colonialism and, yes, sexism. It also has a few well-done twists.
Though we can’t help but wonder, if it starred two middle-aged men hating on each other in a western, would it have been given more time to find its footing?
Actually we all know the answer to that, don’t we?
THE DIRTBAG DISPATCH
If you’re gonna sleep, one paw in the air seems to be the latest trend!
All the catfluencers are doing it these days.
WHAT’S IN THE BIG TIME?
Big Time issue 32 goes into why you need to know who the audience for your project is, even beyond broad categories. It’s really important in ways you might not have thought about! And we have the first part of the audio commentary on Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming issue 5!
Sign up for it at birdguestbroadcast.com and help us pay rent and eat food and stuff! It legit helps us pay the bills!
THE END
It’s lunchtime! For us, anyway.
Maybe for you too, if you read this at the right time!
Do that, and then it’s like we’re having lunch together. Aww.
SOCIALS
