: The lesson I hope is still put yourself into it, but understand that there's no way to please everyone and at the same time, try your best to listen to the complaints and to learn. Not all of them are going to be valid, but plenty of them are and we can only learn and do better.

Jamie Broadnax: Welcome back to Get It Right, the podcast exploring the intersection of pop culture and social justice. I am your host, Jamie Broadnax the founder and editor of Black Girl Nerds.com and host of the BGN Podcast. We had such a great experience talking with G Willow Wilson about Ms Marvel and the comics world in general that we wanted to continue exploring what getting it right in comics look like.

Joining us today are Kelly Thompson and , the writer and artist team who created the new Jem and the Holograms comic. I know. You might be thinking, "Wasn't Jem a toy from the 1980's?" but folks, Jem the comic is where it's at. Let me tell you, from its body-positive characters to its stories about trans identity and queerness, Jem is as progressive as it is entertaining. Don't believe me? Well, keep listening. I think you will.

Thank you guys so much for coming on our show. Very excited to talk to the team behind the Jem and the Holograms , by IDW Publishing. Can you introduce yourselves so listeners can match the voice with the person?

Sophie Campbell: Yeah, so I'm Sophie. I drew Jem and yeah, I guess that's it.

Kelly Thompson: You didn't really just draw Jem. She did The Incredible White Moon. I'll do it for her.

Sophie Campbell: All right.

Kelly Thompson: The incredible Wet Moon. She does Shadoweyes. She does Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and she drew Jem for about half of our run. She did 12 issues, and of course because she did the opening, she designed all those characters, she set the standard, she set the bar to which whenever she's not able to draw we're always aiming for. She's incredible.

Sophie Campbell: Aw. Thanks, Kelly. You're so good at that.

Kelly Thompson: I am Kelly Thompson. I write the ongoing Jem and the Holograms. I'm also writing the upcoming Misfits spin-off that comes out in December. I've also written A Force and I'm writing an upcoming that's coming out. Some people, very few of them, might know me from Heart in a Box which is a I did with the current Jem artist, Meredith McClaren. We did that a couple of years ago. Yeah, I just launched a new create your own series called Mega Princess that, if you can believe it, dropped the day after the election, which seemed like the worst day ever to care about comic books but it is pretty joyous and happy. So if you need something light an uplifting, pick it up.

Jamie Broadnax: Well, you know what? I have to say comics are a great way to escape and I see so

many people comment to me about how they got into comics and even so much as to say, "Hey, comic books have saved my life." The work that you're doing is very important and I think right now a lot of people are turning to Jem and the Holograms as well as many other comic books to escape the craziness of what's happening in our political climate. Thank you for your work.

Kelly Thompson: Thank you.

Jamie Broadnax: Now, this might surprise the uninitiated, but Jem and the Holograms might be the most progressive comic on the market. Can you give our listeners an overview of the series and how it came to exist? This question is for the both of you.

Kelly Thompson: Jem and the Holograms is basically an adaptation, a re-imagining, of the 1980's cult cartoon show, Jem and the Holograms which was basically a show for kids that's a fascinating mixture of romance. The song is fashion, adventure, and fame. Glitter, fashion, adventure, and fame. Something like that. That's really what it is because it's the story of these four foster sisters who are in a band and who get ahold of this crazy hologram technology called Synergy.

The show seems like it would just be this weird romance show, but it's got this completely awesome sci-fi angle to it and they have these antagonists. Another band called The Misfits. It's just about the push and pull of these women's lives, so for our book we just took all of that and updated it to modern time. Then made some tweaks to some diversity issues to make it fit more in 2015, which was when it started.

Sophie Campbell: I think Kelly and I heard about it simultaneously from our different editors and we were both like, "Who's editing Jem? Put me in contact with this person," and Kelly and I just put together a pitch. I remember Kelly you were super nervous about it.

Kelly Thompson: Well, I thought they would want Sophie for sure, but I thought our pitch was really good. I've done a lot of pitches and I put a lot of work. You end up putting so much work into a pitch that even a book you didn't think you wanted when you started, you really want it by the end because you just fall in love with it. Jem was to this day I really feel like we hit it out of the park on the pitch, so I knew the pitch was good and I knew they would want Sophie.

I had given Sophie permission to do it without me if they just didn't want me because at that point even though Heart in a Box was already in process and it was going to be coming out from Dark Horse, I was able to send the editors of Jem a huge chunk a Heart in a Box to prove to them that I knew what I was doing. I had published only four pages of comics in one anthology issue, so I knew I was a huge gamble on the ticket. So I was terrified it wasn't going to work out and it was my huge big break into the industry. Of course I was terrified. Sophie was like, "We'll totally get it."

Sophie Campbell: Yeah, I've had a ton of rejected pitches over the years. Mostly from DC.

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Kelly Thompson: Me too.

Sophie Campbell: I'm extremely used to being rejected on pitches, but I don't know. I just knew.

Jamie Broadnax: I'm curious. Can you walk us through what a pitch is? What is the process of doing that in front of comic book publisher?

Sophie Campbell: It's basically a nightmare.

Kelly Thompson: Sophie and I spent a lot of time talking about it. What we wanted it to be, what we were interested in, what we thought the themes were and everything. Then I started pulling stuff together for what I thought the first arc was. Who we basically thought these characters were. While I was doing that, Sophie was doing a Pizzazz. She did a Pizzazz image and a Jem image to both show them how she wanted to do it, what it was going to look like, and they also had her amazing fan art that had come out a few years before.

Sophie Campbell: Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.

Kelly Thompson: They sort of knew how she would approach it, but we took a little more realistic angle than Sophie's fan art, so she drew up a more realistic approach to that, but that also included how our approach to the music was going to be. Not fully, but you could see it within those images how we were going to approach it and the colors and everything. In that pitch we also included because we knew there were a lot of characters, and there was going to be a lot of breakdown, there was going to be a lot of stuff that we wanted to change but still hold onto the spirit of it.

Body diversity was really important to us. Right out of the gate we requested that Jetta be black, which was actually a thing that was supposed to be in the original show, but put the kibosh on. We both felt really strongly that she should be there from the beginning. The Misfits were lily-white otherwise and I feel like that's my favorite thing that we've done of anything because Jetta's secretly one of my favorite characters. Especially she and Roxy together and their villainous BFF thing. I just love it so much. I totally want to write a spin-off of them causing mischief.

Yeah, there were things like that within it, nut then there were also more broad- stroke things like, "Here are the themes," and we outlined lightly in summary what the first arc was going to be and what some of the character beats were going to be. I think we outlined the first arc that was supposed to be six issues, and then there was a summary paragraph pitch for what the next arc was supposed to be, and that was supposed to be four or five issues, and then we also talked a little bit about Dark Jem which was something we wanted to do right out of the gate. That was all there from day one.

Jamie Broadnax: Awesome. So, was Jem the doll or Jem the cartoon important to either of you growing up?

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Kelly Thompson: I think Sophie was a even bigger fan than I was. Although Sophie's a bit younger than I am, so I think she saw it on re-runs, right?

Sophie Campbell: No. I saw it.

Kelly Thompson: Oh, did you see it originally?

Sophie Campbell: Yeah, when it was airing.

Kelly Thompson: You must have been just a baby.

Sophie Campbell: Yeah.

Jamie Broadnax: Me too.

Sophie Campbell: Yeah, like I've told you before, I didn't get it when I first saw the show.

Kelly Thompson: Right. I saw stuck with you not understanding why The Misfits weren't being nice.

Sophie Campbell: Yeah. I didn't understand why they were bad or something.

Kelly Thompson: Such an unjust world.

Sophie Campbell: Yeah. I hated Pizzazz so much because she was bad and I didn't understand why, but I was never a huge tv kid, so I would watch episodes here and there, but not religiously or anything like that. Then it didn't last very long.

Kelly Thompson: Yeah, it was only a few years.

Sophie Campbell: Yeah, and then it was just gone.

Kelly Thompson: Three seasons. Yeah, I was a fan of it for sure and I was a big fan of a lot of the cartoons of that era. I think I leaned, I've always been more of an action/superhero kid at heart even before I realized what superheroes were. I tended to skew a little bit towards Dungeons & Dragons, and GI Joe, and She-Ra. Maybe even Thundercats, but I always liked and watched Jem when it was on.

I think I knew without understanding how special it was that it was just filled with female characters. On almost every other show except for She-Ra that I watched there was a cool token female character, but it was the opposite with Jem. It was wall-to-wall with ladies. I didn't know why that was important, but it spoke to me anyway.

Jamie Broadnax: Sophie, this question is for you. You're known for illustrating characters that have women that are body-positive in your work. How important is it for you as an artist to show plus-sized characters and what other qualities are important to making

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comics visually inclusive?

Sophie Campbell: Well, it's definitely important. Not to make it sound crass, but I feel like I've almost built my career on it in a way. I've been at least attempting to do all sorts of different bodies and stuff since day one. Since I was doing the first Wet Moon book and I feel like that became my thing I guess. In the eyes of editors and stuff, that was my shtick so to speak.

As I've continued in comics, it's both more important to me and less at the same time because I've been doing it for so long that I don't think about it as much anymore. It's just what should be done? I start trying a project and that's just what I do. The only time that I ever really put myself behind it is when if there's an editor or whoever that tells me to not do it and then I flip out.

Kelly Thompson: As you should.

Sophie Campbell: Right.

Kelly Thompson: When you designed Stormer, as a fat woman, there's such self-hate with that that part of me didn't even want her to draw Stormer like that. It was too close to home. "Oh, I don't want to write her. That's too much like who I am and the way I look. I don't want it to be an author insert." I honestly didn't even say anything because I didn't think there was any way that design was going to get through at Hasbro.

I said that to Sophie. I was like, "This is a great design. I don't think they'll approve it. There's never going to let her be that fat," and they didn't say a thing. I was so happy, and I felt so redeemed and accepted even though I'm not Stormer. It was such a gleeful moment and then I was terrified. I was like, "Now I can't say no to this. We need this." Oh my God, it was terrifying.

Sophie Campbell: Yeah, I'm glad you didn't tell me all of that stuff way upfront in the beginning.

Kelly Thompson: I did tell you some of it in the sense that I was, "Well, they'll never go for that, but I appreciate what you're doing."

Sophie Campbell: Just how apprehensive you were. I remember you didn't tell me that until later.

Kelly Thompson: Yeah. Well, I didn't want to get in the way of what you were doing. Listen, even as I was self-hating myself and hating Stormer for being a bit of an insert even though you didn't mean to do that, I knew how important it was at the same time and, like you said, it should be just what we see all the time and it's never there. So I was very glad when they didn't even say anything. Not a single note about Stormer.

Sophie Campbell: Yeah, it's definitely important to me in a general way. Just reflecting reality in the best way that I can I guess.

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Kelly Thompson: That's totally obvious in your work too. Even just in your work on Jem. Remember when we were talking about noses really early on and you were all, "I draw the same noses too much." I feel like your noses are the most varied thing ever now.

Jamie Broadnax: Well, you mentioned something really poignant Sophie; reflecting reality. That holds so much value for me as a woman, as a woman of color, as a plus-size woman of color. I think it's important that we see these images reflected in comics like Jem and the Holograms, and Wet Moon and so many others because as a kid growing up, as a chubby kid growing up, all of the superheroes were these really thin- waisted, big busty women that looked like they were a size two and I didn't see characters like Stormer growing up. I'm a little envious of those young women out there that get to read this comic and get to see themselves reflected this way and have some self-confidence in who they are. What you're doing is such important work.

Sophie Campbell: Well thank you. I'm glad.

Jamie Broadnax: Absolutely. Kelly, we actually chatted about body diversity before Jem was first released and you had said in our interview it was important to all of us that these women have different an unique bodies and represent a much larger spectrum. My question to you is, "How much of this had an impact on you as a writer?"

Kelly Thompson: I think less than you would think in the sense that the Jem world that we've presented so far is incredibly accepting. The way that Stormer gets to be fat in the Jem comic is that nobody bullies her about that. Nobody tells her to go on a diet. Nobody thinks for a second she's unworthy or any less fierce than anyone else. By the same token, nobody tells Clash to eat a sandwich because she's really skinny. It's just completely accepting. They've surrounded themselves with people that are completely accepting of them and that was really important to us.

That was important for us on a lot of different levels of diversity. Body diversity, race sexuality, gender identity. All those things were really important to us and we wanted to show first and foremost a really positive version of that because I think in a lot of media, whenever you see that stuff, it's traumatic or it's an issue. "Oh, here's the very special issue about this," or whatever. I think it was important for us to really lay a groundwork about that. Part of laying the groundwork for that is not doing anything. It's just letting Sophie draw them and then just letting them go about their lives.

It's that great Greg Rucka quote about "How do you write great women?" "Well, I just write people." It's the same way writing a fat person in. Which is not to say that I think especially when we're talking about race and sexual identity and gender identity that you need to talk to people and you need to try to come from a place of truth and understanding. Not everybody's the same, but we all are people and so I think there's this fine line tightrope to walk. Part of bringing that positive portrayal was just not shining a light on those things beyond how Sophie matter-of- factly presented them in all their gloriousness.

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We are doing something a little different in Misfits. In Stormer's issue, which is Misfits number 2, which comes out in January. That'll be the first time we're seeing that Stormer has surrounded herself with really powerful accepting people that that's not the whole world and that she does have to deal with this other awful stuff and that it's part of what makes her who she is.

I don't really think it's something we could have done in Jem because there's so many characters and there's not room, but by focusing just on The Misfits and their own book and by Stormer already having been in 20-some issues of a comic here and there, the groundwork of who she is and what she's about has already been laid that we can really dive deeply into this. Since I am a fat woman, it was definitely the hardest thing I've ever written except for maybe Heart in a Box. I hope I got it right. I'm sure people will let me know when we're on Twitter.

Jamie Broadnax: You had touched on sexual identity and I wanted to ask about the sexuality in this comic book series because Jem shows all kinds of relationships. Including focusing on a lot of the star-crossed love between Kimber from the Holograms and Stormer of The Misfits. Have you gotten feedback from fans in the LGBTQ community about this series at all?

Sophie Campbell: Yeah, for sure. There's always the negative stuff. I'm sure we can talk about that a whole bunch, but there's been a huge outpouring of positive reactions. Much more than I expected. I don't know about you Kelly.

Kelly Thompson: Definitely. The negative, although it's there it's a very small percent.

Sophie Campbell: Yeah. For sure.

Sophie Campbell: Really small sliver of the reaction. It's ranged from individual fans being like, "Thanks for writing these characters and this relationship. It means a lot to me." Ranging all the way up to that New Yorker article that we had which was super cool. Yeah, it's been really good.

Jamie Broadnax: Sophie, in the third collection, the character Blaze comes out as trans when she becomes the singer for The Misfits. You also came out as trans after publishing the first issue of Jem. Does Blaze's story in any way reflect any of your own experience?

Sophie Campbell: Well, obviously I'm not a singer of an amazingly popular rock band or anything like that, but she's a little bit of a self-insert because her concerns in that particular scene are my concerns. I'm not going to name names or anything, but whenever I've read a comic, or a show, or whatever with a trans character in it, I feel like the writers they always skirt around it or they don't say the word trans or something.

They're afraid to say it and they'll just have the character speak in a metaphor. "Well, I'm a woman in my head," or something like that or they'll have a scene where a character stumbles in on them naked or something and that's what

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happens. I can't relate to any of that stuff so I wanted it to be messy I guess. Like life is.

Like I said, her concerns in that scene are things that I worry about. I wanted her to just say it like, "Oh, I'm really worried about this? Being in this space," or whatever. I just wanted her to say, "I'm trans," instead of having this beating around the bush stuff. Yeah, that part was definitely pretty personal for me which is too bad because we get destroyed over that issue.

Kelly Thompson: That's not true. It was mixed.

Jamie Broadnax: Destroyed in what way? I'm curious.

Sophie Campbell: Oh, God. I told Kelly this going into this, "This is going to be a minefield and you can't get this stuff right ever," because everybody's experience is different and everybody's looking for different things in these kinds of characters. It's not going to be 100% good, but I think I underestimated it and it was much worse than I expected. I'm trying to think.

Kelly Thompson: Can I just say ...? Tell if I'm wrong, but I think the primary complaint we got, like she said, a ton of people really loved it and felt like it was really honest and that it really represented their experience or an experience they don't get to see often enough on the page, but I think if you could distill the main complaint down that I saw, I was that it's an all-ages book and we through Blaze's insecurity and fear that she was having, that was very real, we might have suggested especially to young impressionable readers, that she had to disclose her status.

That I think was the over-arching issue and I will say that we made a few tweaks on the trade that we both really liked and I think we feel a lot better about it. Not that it was the same reviewer, but the one reviewer that I think was the most upset about the issue and really was stirring the pot, and that's fine. Someone else at that site reviewed the trade and really felt that the small tweaks we made sort of fixed the issue.

I don't know if the original reviewer agrees with that or not, but it made me feel a little bit better to see that even though we got really savaged on the single issue from one site that seemed to galvanize the people that felt the same way about it. The same site really felt we'd fixed it in the trade, which I felt good about because I felt like it meant we had listened and we had tried, and we had stuck to our guns about what we were trying to say, but diminished what was maybe the more dangerous message that we didn't realize we were conveying to younger audiences especially.

Sophie Campbell: Yeah. I think that's it.

Kelly Thompson: Is that right? I don't want to speak for you. I remember it very clearly.

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Sophie Campbell: I think that was the main thing. Yeah, the fact that they felt that we were saying that Blaze owed it to The Misfits. I think that was the main complaint.

Kelly Thompson: I agree with them.

Sophie Campbell: Yeah, for sure. It was a learning experience.

Kelly Thompson: One I am hopefully not going to be going through in January when the Stormer issue comes out.

Sophie Campbell: You're on your own for that one.

Kelly Thompson: I know. I don't like that.

Sophie Campbell: Yeah, that was rough. I was pretty bent out of shape about that when it happened.

Kelly Thompson: Yeah, can I say something here? The hardest thing for me around that happening was that I think the complaint from both the reviewer and from the people that agreed was completely valid. I didn't love the way in which it was dealt out and that there were some assumptions made about Sophie not being involved that were blatantly wrong.

There was some problems in the way it came out, but the complaint was completely valid and I think especially as we thought about it more and as we looked at it again, we really agreed with a lot of what was said there. The problem for me was that Sophie completely shut down for a while because by putting so much of herself so honestly on the page and then being told it was wrong felt like telling her she was wrong.

I don't know what the answer is to that because you have to be able to criticise art and media is vulnerable in that way, but it felt really bad just from my outsider perspective of being Sophie's friend and collaborator and someone who helped bring this about that Sophie then felt like she was being told her experience was wrong too. It was very emotional. It was hard to watch.

Sophie Campbell: Yeah, that was rough. I don't know if I feel this way now, but at the time I felt like the lesson was not that he scene itself was necessarily bad or damaging in this horrible way, but the fact that it was in Jem, which is supposed to be this all-ages book so I started feeling like, "Well, maybe the lesson is not to put my personal problems into a licensed book." I don't know if I feel that way now.

Kelly Thompson: I think if that's the lesson I'm screwed by the way because it's what I've done this upcoming issue. I don't disagree with you, but isn't that what we should be doing is putting ourselves into it? Even if it's the licensed stuff.

Jamie Broadnax: Right. I think that's important. You have to pour your experiences into the book. You're going to reach people that share that collective experience and are going to

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be able to feel some sort of empathy or just feel like they belong. You're creating a sense of visibility that aren't represented in other books. So I think it's important to pour your experiences into that. You're always going to get those critics that are just not going to be happy like you had said earlier.

Kelly Thompson: Yeah, we'll just have to deal with it.

Sophie Campbell: I definitely feel better about it now.

Kelly Thompson: For me, I hope the lesson was, and listen, it's constantly a learning process for me, but to me, the lesson I hope is still put yourself into it, but understand that there's no way to please everyone. At the same time, try your best to listen to the complaints and to learn. Not all of them are going to be valid, but plenty of them are and we can only learn and do better. I guess we'll find out in January.

Jamie Broadnax: Well, speaking of January, we're getting a new president in January. Do you think Trump's election and the climate it's creating in our society will be reflected in Jem going forward or is the Jem world a happier parallel universe?

Kelly Thompson: I think it has to be a happier parallel universe if only because there's art and all sorts of media that will likely come out of the horrors we're about to head into that will be groundbreaking and change-inducing, and just so important to us and to culture, but I don't think it's going to be in an all-ages licensed comic. We only have so much we can do with Jem. I think probably the better approach to take for something like Jem is to let it be a beautiful, sweet. A bright shining light of something that's better than what we have.

Jamie Broadnax: Well, thank you guys so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. This was a really great, fun session, and I'm such a big fan of Jem and the Holograms and a fan of your work respectively. I want you to give our listeners an opportunity to tell where they can find you on the interwebs. If you can give us your social media shout-outs and your websites. So, we'll start with Kelly and then Sophie.

Kelly Thompson: I think the best place to find me is on Twitter. It's @79SemiFinalist. From there you can find all the Facebook pages, and Tumblr pages, and websites you might want.

Sophie Campbell: On Twitter I'm mooncalfe1. M-O-O-M-C-A-L-F-E. I'm on a Twitter break right now, but I'm sure I'll be back eventually. I'm also mooncalfe on Tumblr. Those are the two places where I'm most active.

Jamie Broadnax: Well, thank you. This was great.

Sophie Campbell: Yeah, thanks for having us.

Kelly Thompson: Definitely. No offense to you Jaime. I was sort of dreading it just because we've all been so miserable this week but it was really great to talk to you. I really appreciate you letting us talk about weird things that we like to talk about.

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Jamie Broadnax: Absolutely. This was a great escape for just a few minutes.

Kelly Thompson: Yeah. Absolutely.

Jamie Broadnax: Thanks so much again to Kelly and Sophie for their great work on Jem and for speaking honestly about the challenges and lessons of trying to get it right. It's more important than ever for us to find and enjoy stories that reflect an inclusive world and Jem should definitely be on your list for that. We're even getting close to the end of the season, which is actually coming next week. Can you believe it?

If you enjoy this podcast we still really need you to show us love with ratings and reviews. What did you like the most and that would you like to see in the future? I've also got a lot going on at Black Girl Nerds, so go onto Black Girl Nerds.com and subscribe to our newsletter. Also we have a podcast. It's the BGM Podcast.

You can go to iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Spotify, and Spreaker. Get It Right is hosted by me, Jaime Broadnax. This show is produced by Mark Faletti, Rewire's director of multi-media. Editorial input is provided by senior reporter Jenn Stanley and oversight by Jodi Jacobson, Rewire's president and editor in chief.

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