In 2015, Lily Williams and Karen Schneemann started a webcomic about a topic rarely addressed in the medium: menstruation. That comic was “The Mean Magenta.” Five years later, they explored what the leads were like in high school with the original graphic novel “Go with the Flow.” That OGN would be met with high praise, taking the Michigan Reading Association’s Great Lakes Book Award and the Surrey Schools Book of the Year, and even getting nominated for a Best Publication for Kids Eisner. It also garnered some unfortunate attention in Keller, Texas, where it was removed from libraries.
However, this has not stopped Williams and Schneemann. They’ve returned to Hazelton High to catch up with Abby, Brit, Christine, and Sasha as they navigate love, identity, and life in general in “Look on the Bright Side.” We spoke to the creators about writing this sequel, their process, and the earthquake that made them friends. We would like to thank both of them for their time.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity
This is actually a sequel to “Go with the Flow,” right?
Karen Schneemann: Yep!
Lily Williams: Yeah!
The original “Go with the Flow” grew out of the “Mean Magenta” webcomic, wasn’t it? And it sounded like you had the sequel more or less ready to go as you were writing the first book. Or at least some idea.
KS: I think it was just part of our process going in. We had the characters really– we tried to have backstories and well defined characters. And the “Mean Magenta” comic itself is actually when the girls are all older, when they’re all working. And so we had to age them down essentially to write “Go with the Flow” when they were in high school. And then with the sequel, we kind of knew where we wanted their stories to go, right? Because we knew where they end up. So I think we just put a little too much work into developing very solid characters.
Obviously “Go with the Flow” was a book very much focused on menstrual health. What was your idea going into “Look on the Bright Side?” Did you have the general idea first? Or did it grow organically from the characters?
LW: I think it grew really organically from the characters. We knew what we wanted to do with them. We knew where we wanted it to go, so it felt– I don’t want to speak for {Karen], but we agreed it felt pretty natural how the path just proceeded forward. We always knew we couldn’t do everything we wanted in the first book. So having the ability to expand on that and cover the things we didn’t cover in the first book in the second.
Reading “Go with the Flow,” it seems like there were places where scenes where you wanted the characters to grow. Especially with a lot of the Christine and Abby stuff.
LW: Yeah, there was a natural path forward. Karen and I had done so much fleshing out of what was going to happen early on that we just had this vision of what was going to happen. And I think when you know that, you’re able to tell– we were able to tell “Go with the Flow” while keeping some of the information back. Because we knew it deserved more attention. And we had a lot of conversations while writing “Go with the Flow” on if we had Christine come out in “Go with the Flow.” We felt that was so much to do in one book.
KS: And similar with Britt’s struggle with endometriosis and getting a diagnosis. Because, like Lily said– I don’t know if you read the back matter in “Go with the Flow” too, but Lily said it doesn’t always work out really well. And it takes a really long time for people to get that diagnosis. So we didn’t want to tie a neat little bow on it and be unrealistic.
The one nice thing about this book is that it’s friendly for new readers who haven’t read “Go with the Flow.” There is a little bit at the beginning to catch the readers up current status quo. Was that in the back of your mind too? That this might be someone’s first exposure to these characters?
Continued belowKS: I always think that– I have a daughter who’s nine. She’s reading everything in sight now. And she loves comics and graphic novels. And she will pick up books at the bookstore, and they’ll be like… second book in a series or the fourth book in a series. I wanted to make sure that– because I know she starts reading and she goes “What are they talking about?” I had in my mind that yeah, it would be nice to have something to go on, right? A little bit of background so you’re not just hitting the ground running. And I think with Lily, we were pretty in sync with this. The way we work, there’s some kind of magic there [laughs]. We tend to agree more often than we… you know, don’t.
I was even going to ask too, what is your working relationship? Especially since you both wrote the book. And Lily, you did the art. What was your process?
KS: I think it was actually very collaborative. I’m not sure how we– it’s also like we mind meld. We tend to do work over Zoom. With “Go with the Flow,” it was nice because we were in person. We both lived in the bay area in California. And so we could just get together and write it together. With this one, we did a lot of the work over Zoom. so we had a shared Google document, and we’d plot out the main points we wanted. Then we’d work section by section, working together saying “What should they say next? What should this person say? Should this character be there?” Kind of a lot of back and forth. Sometimes we’d re-read it and put noted in for the other person. And we’d meet again and discuss. And Lily can definitely talk about the art.
LW: Yeah, it’s really collaborative. I haven’t talked to a lot of people who’ve co-written books together. But I have read some articles and interviews from co-creators. We have a very collaborative process. We are looking at the same document. We go back-and-forth and go “Okay, this scene kind of has to go here.” We discuss what the arc we need is. We discuss where we’re going ultimately. And then we literally just back and forth write a scene together. Very rarely and sometimes one person will just write a scene and the other will edit it. So in every single scene, and every single bit of dialog, it’s both of us. Which is, I think, pretty rare and really interesting. One of the cool things is when Karen and I started doing this– I’m not sure if you remember this, Karen [laugh]– we were like “Okay, in order for us to do this, we have to be a hundred percent honest with each other at every single point.” And we basically shook and did a handshake agreement on if something is a problem or you feel a certain way, we need to vocalize that to each other.
So I think we have this really good baseline of honesty that makes the collaboration much more natural. And we’ve stuck to it. There have been moments where one of us has been like “Huh… I don’t know if I like that. Or I don’t know if I love where this is going. Can we rework this line?” And we do. So we have this really honest, very instinct collaborative relationship. And when I do this art, I am kind of like– I live in Colorado now. Karen’s in California. So I am kind of in my own little bubble. But I do send her scenes. I’ll even just screenshot a panel or so and I’ll just send it to her via text, and I’m like “Hey, does this look like we were thinking?” Because we do put some emotional beats in our script. Even though I am drawing it, I do actually get Karen’s feedback pretty consistently through the whole thing.
That is a rare thing when two writers are in lockstep. But you’ve been doing this for a while now. You two originally met in animation class? And Karen, I know you’re an engineer too.
Continued belowKS: It’s a weird two minded brain thing, right? Like both sides of my brain. So first I got my undergrad degree in engineering. I was an engineer for a while. Then I kind of realized I always wanted to do art. I always wanted to explore that. And so I started looking at art schools. It helps that I got frustrated at my job at the time. So I was like “Now I’m gonna look at this!” And then as soon as I started looking, I was like “I think I can actually do it.” And so I took the leap and I quit my job and I went back to art school. Which was weird, because I was like ten years older than most of the kids there [laughs]. Because it was another undergrad degree. But I met Lily in one of our animation classes.
It was one of our digital animation classes, so everyone was sitting at their own computer at the desk, and there was a projector up on the ceiling. And because it was over on the Oakland campus, in California, an earthquake happened. And I remember looking up at that projector, and it was a huge projector, then looking down. Lily was right under it. And I was like “It would squash her!” I was just like “Hey,” because I had never met her, “Hey! You might want to just scoot away from that, just in case there’s an aftershock.” And she’s like “Thank you so much!” And from then on we just started chatting and goofing off and just getting together for coffee or food, and friendship bloomed [laughs].
And then a webcomic happened!
LW: The webcomic was the natural progression. We kept having these conversations about making comics, making art, making animated movies. These big creative discussions you do in college with your peers. We would always go down to this curry place near campus after class and have curry. One time we were discussing “Why aren’t there period comics?” And then we just were like “Why don’t we make one?” We were both really nervous at first. I think that’s what’s special about our friendship. Because we are so honest and collaborative with each other, I think it really comes out in how the girls interface. Because they have these really authentic, sometimes really tough conversations with each other. And I think Karen and I are able to do that too. One of our big worries is– we make a comic about menstruation. And this back in– gosh, 2016? 2015? It was before some of the presidencies we’ve had now. And we were really scared about what the internet climate would take to. Abby freaks out in the first book “I don’t want the trolls to come!” That was a real conversation that we had.
It’s kind of interesting, because the blog is kind of a throughline in the two graphic novels. Again, was that something that came naturally from the thoughts and conversations about how the (famously calm and collected) internet will react?
KS: [laughs] I think that was one of our big– so the way “Go with the Flow” happened is I think is kind of unique to how books are created. I’m very new to the book industry. I guess not as new now–
Yeah! You two got nominated for an Eisner!
KS: [Laughs] That was amazing. That was truly amazing. But with “Go with the Flow”– Lily had worked on children’s books previously. Illustrated children’s books about science, right? Like biology. The If the Animals Disappeared series. And Emily [Feinberg] saw the webcomic, and had a discussion with Lily about it. She was like “I’m going to pitch this and see if we can get a book.” Like a graphic novel. And Lily’s like “I’ve never done a graphic novel! Okay!” [laughs] We started having discussions. How do we do this? How would we start it out? Where is that story going to come from? And Abby was kind of like the big character that’s a change maker. She’s trying to make the world a better place. I think they all are. But Abby’s got that drive,
Continued belowLW: There was interest from Emily. She would follow along. She would send us comments when she liked them. She would be like “Oh! This is so relatable!” Then it just kind of– in a very non-traditional publishing way, it just kind of folded into making a graphic novel. I always hoped that’s where this was going to go. It was conversations we had actually had. I think Karen was a little nervous about that. But I was like “No! We can do this!” And we did! We talked about it too. I was like “We have to make this book shorter.” And it’s… what, like three pages shorter? [Laughs] We had somehow managed to write a two or three hundred page graphic novel.
You’ve been working with First Second too. How’s that working relationship been?
LW: It’s good. Emily Feinber’s our editor. And she’s at Roaring Brook. But First Second is the one publishing the book. I’m not really sure— I always joke that authors are the last to know. But I don’t really understand how all that works. And it’s above my paygrade. So I just turn in the art and they handle it [laughs]. We’ve had some really awesome conversations. First Second’s been a great place for this series. I think it’s a good fit. And they’re really championed the book, especially with all the book bannings and censorship going on right now.
Which I know you’re familiar with as well with “Go With the Flow.”
LW: Unfortunately yeah…
KS: It’s been an interesting last few years for sure.
I did want to talk about the art for a second. This time around, you had Kaley Bales as color director. For “Go with the Flow,” you used shades of red. Which is brilliant, by the way. How was it working with Kailey Bales? And was the idea behind the colors in this book?
LW: Kailey did such an awesome job. And she was amazing. We had a great time working together. It was really interesting because when we did “Go with the Flow,” I was set up to be the colorist. But I actually had my surgery for endometriosis, like Britt, during the middle of the deadline. With many large surgeries and in-demand doctors, that was the only time I could get in. It was tough because I had to take a full month off. So what we ended up doing was Kailey and Karen and I colored the first book. I knew I wanted it to be red. But before I sectioned up how many pages we were doing and uploaded them. I did a full hour tutorial for both of them. Karen and Kailey and I managed to get the whole book colored and done. So when it came time to do the sequel, I knew that I wanted Kailey to do the sequel because she did such a good job with the first one. There was a conversation… Karen, do you remember that? We were having that conversation at the very beginning about like… “Do we pick another single color?”
KS: Yeah.
LW: And I think it was Karen and I who were like “I don’t think a single color really fits this book.” This story feels so much more open. Right now I’m referring to the first book as more periods then friendship second. This book is friendship first, periods second. Having a full color book made sense. And the first book, it could have been full color. But we chose for it not to be. So Kailey took it away and she did the rest of it. And she did such a good job.
KS: I know when we were talking about “Look on the Bright Side,” Lily had a whole panel of the main characters that she just kinda sketched out for character design. They were all in color and they looked so good. They looked so amazing that I was like “Aww! Can we do this one in color? That would be amazing!” And Kailey— the really nice part about Kailey is like— she kind of blew my mind. You see the panels, and you color the panels, and it really changes them once you add the color. But when I see Kailey’s work, she added textures in the background that match the characters’ feelings in the moments. And I was like— I was just very impressed with her.
Continued belowDo you have any thoughts on what a third volume would look like? Of course, if your editors are reading this, this is totally non-binding!
KS: [laughs] I think it’s definitely a wait and see. I think “Go with the Flow” did get a lot of positive feedback. Which is great. And it seems like “Look on the Bright Side” is so far getting some really good reviews. Which is amazing. I know that Lily and I both know where these girls are going. I think it would be really cool to transition them into adulthood, that early adulthood stage that the “Mean Magenta” comics kinda started off in. Who knows what’ll actually happen.
LW: I think Karen and I kinda know where things go. It’s very funny though to be like— I feel like some sort of keeper of secrets [laughs]. Because we kinda know what we want to do. And that’s how we felt with “Go with the Flow.” So when would people say like “Oh! What’s going to happen with this?” Karen and I would be like “Well, we know! But I can’t tell you yet!”
But I’m not sure. I know that I’d love to keep working with Karen for the rest of my career, because it’s such a rare and special working relationship. I’ve worked with a lot of people and Karen and I just have something magical when we work together. So I want to keep working with Karen. As for where this goes, I’m not sure right now. I just hope that people really enjoy the sequel. And if they want more, they’ll tell us.
“Look on the Bright Side” is available now both digitally and in print from First Second.
