Issue 44: SDCC recap, Just Another summer, derby, film fests, and Autostraddle!
We’re back from SDCC!
There’s so much to talk about.
Perhaps too much?
NEW STUFF
Before we get into our SDCC recap, it is our sworn duty to let you know that Just Another Summer is now officially available everywhere!
We’re so excited that it’s finally out, and to see how folks respond to it! We’ve gotten basically no advance reviews of this book, so it’s a complete mystery to us how it’s going to be received.
We don’t have enough copies yet to put signed ones up in our Ko-fi shop… we’re still waiting on our comps to arrive, and then we’ve got three local events coming up that we want to be sure we have enough copies for. But we’ll get them up there as soon as we can!
But Autostraddle listed it as one of their most anticipated queer books out this month!
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya and Riese
And we were on the lovely Turn the Page podcast to talk all about the book!
Jenn
So! Let’s talk about SDCC!
It was, as has been the case these past few years, entirely overwhelming and yet amazing and delightful and stressful all at once.
Our schedules were so packed and that just didn’t leave us any downtime, or for things like… meals. But it was fabulous!
Lovely people came to our IDW, Mad Cave, and PRSIM signings, and it’s always such a delight to get to interact with your audience in person.
It was also the first time we got to see Just Another Summer and the Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming trade paperback in person! And that was really special. It’s still so wild to us that they’re coming out so close together, while being written over a year apart.
The Drawing Courage: YA Graphic Novels that Speak Out panel was a really good discussion, there’s a nice writeup of it below! They sadly misattributed one of Susan’s quotes to someone else, so when you see the one about trans and queer people in history… that’s her.
Nancy Powell
That panel was professionally filmed, but we’re not sure exactly by who, or when or where it might be released. Given how long it took us to get the Long Away panel footage from WonderCon (which is run by the people who run SDCC), it may be a bit before it turns up. If and when it does, we’ll be sure to link to it.
We did a signing after that panel at the library, which included signing copies for the library itself, and even a school librarian who was getting a copy for their school library! That’s so cool.
One of the many interviews we did has already gone up, this one with our good friends at Fanbase Press! This was actually the first interview and first part of our entire con, done early on preview night not long after we got there! This is why Tilly’s hair still looks so good, the San Diego wind and humidity hadn’t yet destroyed it.
The DC party was as great as it has been every year since we started going (2024, right after we started scripting Princesses of the DC Universe) and is always a highlight for us, and we met so many lovely new friends, and got to see so many old friends we usually only get to see at this con. That’s always the best part.
We also had multiple great chats with editors, and if we’re lucky some work will come from that down the line. But even if not, it’s just fab to get to meet them and talk about this bananas industry we all love.
And then, of course, Long Away had its screening and panel as part of the SDCC Comic-Con International Independent Film Fest! Stars Griffin Kelly and Justin Lawrence Barnes, and assistant director/VFX lead/editor Jessie Earl came down to watch the screening and be on the panel with us.
It was amazing, and it’s always so creatively gratifying to watch our movie with an audience. It’s pretty magical.
The thing we seemingly forgot to mention is that we were only at SDCC from Wed-Fri because Tilly came back to play in her very first real roller derby bout (in 95 degree heat)! She graduated from Freshies at the end of June and moved up to advanced practice, and was assigned to one of our league’s two home teams (the Balboa Lake Monsters).
These teams are everyone who’s scrimmage cleared in the entire league, split into two teams, so we can play in bouts when there are no bouts scheduled for our three travel teams. You can see a whole lot more photos from the bout in the latest addendum to the original version of her roller derby essay!
Tilly then tried out for the travel teams the following day, but did not make any of the teams. Next tryouts are in December for the 2027 teams. Cross your fingers!
We’re sorry we forgot to mention this bout in all the lead up to SDCC, as it was streamed and you could have watched it. DANG.
But! There’s another bout this weekend that both of us will be in!
It’s time for another Freshie bout, and Susan will be playing as she is actively participating in the Freshie program (as Doc Frown)! This bout also brings back recently graduated Freshies, to help fill out the teams, so Tilly/Captain Painwa will be rostered in it too. You can watch it on our league’s Twitch channel. First whistle is at 5 pm pacific!
This bout is part of a double header, and the second game is our A-level team (ranked 40th or so out of like a thousand leagues in the US) taking on the OC Roller Derby’s A-level team. It’s much faster paced than the freshie bouts, and often contains some truly superheroic antics, so stick around and watch that bout too!
In more Long Away news, it’s playing this weekend in the OutSouth Queer Film Festival, in Durham, NC! It screens in the "Live Your Life" block of trans short films on SUNDAY, AUG 16 at 1 pm!!
And don’t forget, Long Away is also coming to Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Fest, September 17-27, Chicago, IL!
Long Away is also an official selection of the Gilbert Baker film festival, held in honor of the designer of the original Pride flag!
It’s screening online as part of their “Family Affairs collection” through September 23, and it’s pay-what-you-can! You get access to a few other films along with Long Away, and there’s even an exclusive intro and outro to the film that we recorded just for this festival!
We have a short comic included in a new anthology that’s now officially live on Kickstarter! It’s Systemic, Vol. 2, which is an anthology all about the ways societal systems are designed to crush people, and the ways we fight back.
Our story is Battles Lost and Won: There’s great power in the hate that society wants us to feel, but there’s something far stronger… deep inside our hearts. It’s got gay witches! What more could you ask for?
Oh, and with everything going on we didn’t get the chance to mention this before, but we’ve added stickers to our Ko-fi shop! They’re all tied to Tillys Trans Tuesdays, so have a look and grab some if ya want.
Here’s a nice little writeup Nerdvana did on the Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming trade paperback!
Jayson Peters
And Screenrant has one, too!
Shaun Corley
And hey! We still have two books available for preorder, and by now you well know that preorders make or break books, so here you go!
Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming, the complete series collected in a trade paperback! Releasing NEXT WEEK on August 18!
Our middle-grade sci-fi superhero adventure comedy, Princesses of the DC Universe! Releasing March 2, 2027!
WHAT WE’RE WORKING ON
The pilot first draft is complete! Now comes the revising stage, where we go through revision after revision after revision until we’re both happy with it, and then we send it to outside eyes for thoughts. Somewhere in there it’ll also go to our manager, to get his thoughts and notes, and then we’ll see if he thinks we can get any pitch meetings for it (almost nobody is hearing original pitches right now) or can use it as a staffing sample (almost nobody is staffing writers rooms right now). Ha ha, good times.
We’re also mulling over a script we might submit to another anthology, doing more final lettering approvals on Princesses of the DC Universe, and following up with all the editors and new fellow creatives we met at SDCC.
It’s just so many emails, it’s like a job of its own.
And our agent has sent our graphic novel project out to twenty-two different editors at various publishers, so cross your fingers some of them bite!
TRANS TUESDAY UPDATE
Trans Tuesdays only just came back this week, but before we get to that… Tilly’s essay from last year on RADICAL TRANS ACCEPTANCE AND ROLLER DERBY got picked up by Autostraddle! It’s in the third issue of their print magazine, which is all about queer sports, and you can get a copy now!
And then Trans Tuesdays came back from SDCC-hiatus with the first part of The Imperfect Trans Allegory of KPop Demon Hunters! The film actually connects pretty deeply with a lot of trans folks, but it might not work quite the way we think it does. We start our discussion with context, names, and dive in by timestamps!
Tilly Bridges
RECOMMENDATIONS
Star City is such a fascinating show. Technically it’s a spinoff of For All Mankind, which we’ve talked about in previous newsletters. But it very much stands on its own.
It follows the same basic origin-conceit of For All Mankind: what if Russia made it to the moon before the U.S.? But now we’re seeing it from the Russian point of view, and while it’s a bit grounded sci-fi and a bit spy thriller, it’s very much about people living under fascism and trying to cope, survive, and find small ways of pushing back.
Which, y’know… makes it remarkably relevant to modern life in the U.S. (yikes)
THE DIRTBAG DISPATCH
Sadly the news for Dirtbag Henry is not good. He had more (expensive) bloodwork and an (even more expensive) ultrasound, which necessitated the shaved belly you see above. And the vet’s best guess is he either has a slow growing form of cancer… or a quick one. He’s only ten years old, but this is apparently when this type of cancer shows up in cats.
There are more procedures they could to do try and determine the kind of cancer he’s got, but they’re invasive and even more expensive, and sadly still might not give us a concrete result.
So we made the super hard decision to do what he’d want, and the vet tends to traumatize him. And more invasive procedures and much more routine bloodwork would drastically upset him (he’s gotten so upset about vet appointments before that he hid and kinda stopped eating for days).
He’s got a steroid to help him feel better and bring his appetite back, and soon we’ll be starting him on a low dose chemotherapy pill that may help a lot, or not much at all (depending on what exactly the cancer is that he’s dealing with).
Our goal is to make him as happy and comfortable as he can be for however long he’s got left, which could be anywhere from a few years to a few months.
It’s really hard to deal with, and to just… not know. But we’re trying to put his wants and well-being first, even though he’s a jerk who’d never do the same for anyone else.
He’s a huge asshole, but he’s our asshole. And we’re just gonna love him as much as we can, for as long as we can.
WHAT’S IN THE BIG TIME?
Big Time issue 44 has the exclusive fifth page from one of our earliest comic anthology stories, the gritty 70s crime story, Morrow!
Sign up for it at birdguestbroadcast.com and help us pay rent and eat food and stuff!
THE END
We’re very tired.
But we press on!
Because we don’t know how to press off.
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Tilly Bridges
Susan Bridges
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