Q&A with Rebecca Kirby
In 2021, SP talked to Rebecca Kirby about Slick Susan, a comic she was debuting on her Patreon.
🗣Who is the title character?
👤Slick Susan is a brash, wild tweenage girl. She's the apprentice (and unlikely friend!) of Hoagie Rat, a seasoned treasure scavenger who has taken her under his wing. Susan is—and I say this lovingly—kind of dumb. Like, not properly stupid, but she definitely thinks before she acts and I love that about her. Even though these traits get her in trouble, they get her out of it, too.
🗣You mentioned you’ve been wanting to do this comic for forever . . . where did the idea come from?
👤Oh man, this has such a silly origin story. She came from a drawing game I was playing with my partner and a friend a couple years ago: one of us would write down a dumb, made-up object and pass it to someone else to illustrate. It was always stuff like "corn crab," "berry boy," just trying to be annoying. I wrote "Slick Susan" and my partner drew this disgusting-looking girl with slicked-back hair like the Fonz. I loved her, adopted her, and she was a beloved inside joke for a while. It became a funny pastime to make up lore about her, and then a few years later I realized I had multiple notebooks filled. Making this comic is just me trying to organize it!
🗣Based on your instagram, it looks like you’re painting this. What went into the decision to work traditionally?
👤I think it's because I can, honestly. This comic is 100% mine, so finally having the option to approach comics exactly how I want to is too much fun to pass up. A lot of Susan comes from how I saw stuff as a kid, too, and I feel like gouache gives off that "look.”
🗣Is there really a HOAGIE RAT? What can you tell us about him?
👤Haha, Hoagie is the unfortunate name of Susan's best friend and mentor in junk-hunting. He's a gruff rat with a past who's trying to live a respectable life, and he has exquisite taste. Hoagie was a stupid place-holder name, but then nothing else felt right, so I have a gigantic rodent named after a sandwich.
🗣What other characters will we meet?
👤Cowboy Magic, one of the sisters who runs the M'leko Magic Unconventional Milks Dairy Farm, is another favorite character. She has her place in the story now, but originally I just really wanted to see if I could combine a cowboy hat and a witch's hat. It turns out it is absolutely possible to combine the two, if you were wondering.
🗣The only place to see it is by joining your Patreon, right?
👤Patreon will be the only place I post full pages and the full story, yes! It even has its own tag, so anyone who joins my Patreon comics tier can just click the "SlickSusan" tag to find all available pages at once. I will also be posting bits to Instagram, but Patreon will be getting all the goods.
🗣Is it serialized, or are you posting everything at once? Do you have the whole story written and/or drawn? Or will it be open-ended and ongoing like a newspaper strip?
👤I have many scripted at this point, and pencils for a few of them. However, Susan is a series of short stories that—as of now—has no visible end. Because of this, I'm going to be posting as I go, and then collecting them.