PRIDE MONTH 2026! In the first of our Pride Month interviews features this year at Broken Frontier we speak with married writing team Tilly Bridges and Susan Bridges. Their extensive resume crosses genres and media including properties like Star Trek and Monster High. We chat today about trans representation in popular culture, the collaborative writing process, and their upcoming graphic novel Just Another Summer from Mad Cave’s YA imprint Maverick…
Art by Ezekiel Strange
ANDY OLIVER: One of the aims of our Pride Month mini-interviews is to introduce creators to the Broken Frontier audience so let’s start by asking you about your creative backgrounds and the themes you look to explore in your work?
TILLY BRIDGES AND SUSAN BRIDGES: We’ve been creating together for as long as we’ve known each other, because we met writing Star Trek fan-fiction. Writing and telling stories has been a foundational part of our relationship, and we’re never not working on something.
In our work, we like to dig into the reasons why we are who we are, how society tries to shape and mold us into someone else, and what we all owe to each other as fellow humans trying to get through life. We’ve got huge imaginations and love to go blue sky wild, but also love deep character moments that are at the heart of everything. And no matter how bad or broken the world (or the characters) are, we infuse our stories with hope and human connection, because things can always get better if we work together to make it happen. There’s enough grimdark in the world.
AO: Co-writing is a collaborative process that doesn’t feel like it’s as prevalent in comics as it once was. So how do the dynamics of that work between you?
TILLY & SUSAN: It works the same way our entire relationship does, actually, in that it’s founded on good communication and honesty. In terms of the mechanics, Tilly will usually do the big, overachieving first draft, and then Susan will kick the tires and rip out everything that’s not working, and put it back together again. And then we basically go back and forth with revisions, until it gets to a place where we’re both happy with it.
There’s some compromise there, because there has to be. But we love collaborative art in all its forms… film, comics, tv, podcasts, games, and on and on. And all of that requires compromise. You have to remember everyone involved is trying to make the best thing possible, and just because an idea is yours (or ours) doesn’t mean it’s the “right” one. Best idea wins, whoever comes up with it, because that makes for the best story.
You have to set your ego aside. But again, that’s also what you have to do in a healthy relationship with a spouse, or even a friend. We just treat our writing the same way.
Just Another Summer’s creative team also includes Giulia Rinaldo, AoiG (art), Valentina Briški (colorist) and Chas! Pangburn (letterer)
AO: You have a new book coming from Mad Cave’s Maverick imprint very soon. What’s the premise of Just Another Summer, and what are you looking to explore in its pages in terms of queer experience and representation?
TILLY & SUSAN: Just Another Summer is about two teen celebrities in Los Angeles getting sent to the family farm in Montana to learn a little humility. But it’s really about how we’re all more alike than not, even if she’s a cis girl actor from L.A. and he’s a trans boy farm hand in Montana. We’re all led to believe things about each other that simply aren’t true, and at heart this book is about learning to not “overcome” but appreciate those differences we do have. And there’s a very sweet lesbian relationship full of joy and discovery running right alongside everything else.
We don’t shy away from what it means to be a trans teen in Montana, or what trans life is like in a world that often doesn’t treat us kindly. We want trans and queer teens to feel seen and understood, and maybe even make the cisgender heterosexual people in their lives understand them better, too.
The book also plays with romcom tropes and turns a few of them on their head, and we worked really hard to not forget the “com” portion of it. It’s sweet and romantic, yes, but we hope it’ll also make you laugh a lot.
Cover by Ángel Hernández
AO: Maverick is, of course, Mad Cave’s YA imprint which leads us into a familiar question that will be coming up in these interviews all month. Why, for you, is comics such a connective medium for communicating and sharing lived experience, particularly for that slightly younger demographic?
TILLY & SUSAN: There’s an appeal for them, I think, in the reader being completely in charge of the pace of the story. If something speaks to them, they can sit with that page, or even a single panel, for as long as they want. If it brings them joy, or makes them think, or makes them sad, whatever it is… they don’t have to move on until they want to. For kids and teens, who may often feel like they lack freedom or a sense of autonomy, that gives them back a small sense of control.
AO: Last year your Star Trek: Voyager – Homecoming miniseries drew widespread critical acclaim. What were the underlying allegorical ideas that provided the foundation for that story?
TILLY & SUSAN: Well in keeping with the kinds of stories we want to tell, the heart of that story is “understanding the other.” It’s about learning that maybe you’re not as different as you thought, and that other people get to decide how they want to live their lives irrespective of what you think about it. But how do you approach that when there are entire systems set up to discourage it? And how does that tie in to some hasty past decisions that might have been different if you knew then what you know now?
Star Trek: Voyager – Homecoming’s creative team also includes Ángel Hernández (art), Charlie Kirchoff (colorist) and Neil Uyetake (letterer)
Captain Janeway has a monologue at the end of the book, over the scenes of the crew’s reunions with their families, that lays it all out there. And we gave her a line that’s something we believe to our core and say all the time, “none of us without all of us.” When any one of us is diminished for who we are, it hurts all of us. None of us are free until all of us are free, and we need to work together to make that happen. For everybody.
And that feels very in keeping with Star Trek, and its compassion and “infinite diversity in infinite combinations” mantra.
AO: You work across so many mediums. Where, outside of comics, can we also find your work?
TILLY & SUSAN: We wrote six episodes for season two of the new Monster High animated series, and our “Monster Fest” Halloween special won a Velma Award for representation in LGBTQIA+ children’s media. We also consulted on season two of Star Trek Prodigy.
Our queer trans sci-fi short film set in a comic shop, Long Away, is working its way through film festivals now. It won the Best LGBTQ Short in the San Diego Movie Awards, and the Silver Award in both the Sci-Fi and LGBTQ categories in the Hollywood Independent Filmmaker Awards, and also had a screening and panel at this year’s WonderCon. It’ll also screen at SDCC as part of their independent film fest, so check the con schedule as soon as they release it, and come say hi and see our movie!
Tilly’s also written a book, Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of The Matrix, about the deeply specific and foundational transness that permeates every film in that franchise. She also writes weekly essays on trans life which are available at TillysTransTuesdays.com. There’s over two hundred of them, and they’re all free. There’s also a companion podcast of the same name. If you want to know what living as trans in this world is like, definitely check it out.
We’ve also written for the Star Trek Adventures and Fallout tabletop roleplaying games, we recently did a live reading/performance of our original cyberpunk action dramedy Robo Waitress Assassins, and a whole lot more. You’ll find a full list of our credits and links to our work at Birdguest.com!
AO: And, finally, what’s next for you both? Are there any upcoming projects you can talk about?
TILLY & SUSAN: We have another graphic novel that should be releasing in the first quarter of 2027, but it hasn’t been officially announced yet so we can’t say much more about it right now. We also wrote an episode of another animated series that doesn’t yet have a premiere date, so we probably can’t say much more about that either.
Beyond that, we’re working on a new pilot and an indie comic we’ve been financing ourselves (for years now), and we’re toying with another short film idea.
But we’re very available if you’d like to hire us! Get in touch, we’re very friendly and fun and also good at writing things, despite the way this sentence was constructed! 🙂
Visit Tilly and Susan’s online store here
Interview by Andy Oliver
