Q&A with Beck Kubrick

  

 

 

Beck Kubrick is the author and illustrator of the new young adult graphic novel Dead Girls. They live in Manchester, UK. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Dead Girls, and how did you create your character Ash?

 

A: I’m inspired by lots of things: TV shows, films, other books, people on the street. It all makes its way into the story or the thought process. I love horror films and slashers and especially comedy-horrors, so I knew I wanted to make one.

 

There’s lots of interesting tropes and ways we handle things like death, murder, fighting, etc., in fiction. An action hero can kill 50 henchmen, but not the bad guy with a name; in The Walking Dead (2010) they’re still debating morality…in like season 10.

 

And the final girl can fight back…only after she’s been sufficiently traumatized for 90 minutes. What happens when a final girl fights back sooner? What if she’s good at it? What if she likes it?

 

Historically, who gets to live and die in horror and why? I wanted to play with all of that; the expectations and “rules” and how they reflect the world. So it’s sort of meta-slasher, like Scream (1996) but for my generation, because who answers the phone anymore? 

 

The story and Ash herself aren’t total negations of tropes, because that would just be boring and probably too wordy. I wanted Ash to feel, selfishly, like me and my friends and people I know and love.

 

I often engage with books, films etc. with a certain suspension of disbelief; it’s obvious certain characters, usually girls and women, aren’t written from a place of love. I wanted to see if we can still love a final girl (well, girls) who isn’t the way final girls tend to be.

 

Q: Did you work on the text first or the illustrations first--or both simultaneously?

 

A: As this is my debut as an author-illustrator, I was working with editors for the first time as a writer and they wanted a script first, which logically makes sense, but I couldn’t quite do it.

 

I’d do little thumbnails of the pages and moments I thought would be cool, or to plan reveals to be on page turns. I’d have pages of messy sketches only I could understand and then reverse engineer that into a script so an editor could actually give me notes. But in my mind they were always linked.

 

Q: The Kirkus Review of the book called it a “chilling slasher that effectively explores legacy, identity, confronting the past--and refusing to be defined by it.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I think it’s a very flattering description, especially from such a prestigious outlet. Especially on this book that is so painfully mine; there’s a unicorn and dry humor and so much angst.

 

I’ve been blown away by the support I’ve gotten on this book. I constantly expect to be misunderstood or deemed “too weird” or “weird in the wrong way” and yet people get it! They get me!

 

Everything I do is about identity, the past, and legacy to some extent. I think that’s how I view everyone and everything.

 

In fiction we often draw very neat lines between something in the past that leads to actions in the future, but real life is (unfortunately) messier and more nuanced than that. We all are who we are today because of who we were yesterday and who we are tomorrow is because of who we are today.

 

Obviously, I want to write a good and satisfying story so some of it is a little more black and white and obvious, but sometimes life is too.

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: It’s named after a Penelope Scott song; her music circles some of the issues touched on in my book. She’s very online and dry and her song “Dead Girls” is about the commodification of girls and women and issues surrounding that. Her song “Lotta’ True Crime” is about true crime and how weird it is and the false mythology around it.

 

My title is also a nod to an anime, Angel Beats. The characters have many names for their group that are things like “Not Dead Yet Kids.”

 

I considered “Not Dead Girls” or something but I like the tongue-in-cheek vibe of calling them just…“dead.” It’s like the phrase “dead man walking” but they’re girls.

 

Girlhood is a great and wonderful thing, but it is also a prison people can try to put you in. Teenagers are in this weird purgatory, when someone wants to talk down to you or dismiss you, you’re a girl, an innocent child, but when they want to hate you, punish you, sexualize you, then you’re a “young woman.”

 

I also like that it’s kind of blunt and a little tongue in cheek; no one wants to think about the reality of dead kids, dead girls, but they’re at the center of so many true crime stories…but they’re not the ones celebrated.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am currently deep in the comics mines working on a book I co-write and draw that isn’t announced yet. It's a rework of the story we made a while ago and it’s been painful but very rewarding to revisit and revamp some old ideas and artwork. I’m also pretty certain on what my next solo graphic novel will be so I’m solidifying that (editors, hit me up!).

 

I’m also always holding out hope of becoming the next great American novelist, which would be pretty shocking as I’m not American, but I am always working on prose in the background and hope one day to get some of that out into the world too.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I really meant it when I said I was blown away by the support I have received on my book in these early days; everything I do is for the weird kids and this book is no exception.

 

I really hope anyone who picks it up, first and foremost, enjoys it, but also feels seen by some of the characters or experiences (but probably/ hopefully with a lot less serial killers).

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb