On Thursday, we received a press release from BOOM! Studios announcing the creation of a comic book series based on the iconic 90’s movie Clueless, and if you’re not excited, you’re totally buggin’. The series is set to debut this summer, and is brought to us by actress, filmmaker and writer Amber Benson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Witches of Echo Park, Death’s Daughter) and author Sarah Kuhn (Heroine Complex, Barbie), and art by Siobhan Keenan who does illustrations for Adventure Time. The release included this non-final cover art concept by Natacha Bustos (Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy).
Anyone who’s seen Clueless can pretty much agree that it’s iconic. And was essentially the 
pop culture predecessor to Mean Girls.
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Not only did it become a generational staple, but it launched the careers of Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Paul Rudd, and Brittany Murphy(rest in peace my Queen Brit). No matter what any of those actors would do, they remained their Clueless counterparts in the minds of those who were alive to see it. Now, we follow Cher, Dione and Tai in their senior year, and they’re facing the questions that current millennials tend to find the answers to after they’ve incurred thousands of dollars of debt: where do we do after high school?
“I was 17 when I auditioned for Clueless and, sadly, didn’t get a part,” Benson states in the release-referencing her audition as Tai. “But I remember reading the script—tentatively titled As If—and thinking: If they do this right, they are going to kick some serious butt.”
Thankfully, they did Clueless right, and hopes are high for BOOM! to do justice to the movie, and to its rich characters. As with any follow-ups, reboots, prequels, sequels, etc. of extremely well known and established pieces, the line is fine between continuing the concept with reverence, and being so campy it looks like it is trying too hard. The comic series will be much like the movie in the fact that it has to be done juuuuust right, but from what the sample page above shows, there doesn’t seem to be much difficulty in depicting the very unique physical Cher-isms that can’t be avoided in Silverstone’s performance. It’s almost impossible not to hear “as if!” disdainfully squealed mentally when looking at it.
Hopefully, the Valley Girl language doesn’t get distracting, and BOOM! will follow in the footsteps of the writers of the original film, and get all the Valley Speak out of the way early on. Unfortunately, anything set in the 90’s is considered a period piece, and Benson in an interview with Vanity Fair stated the “the hardest part of working on the project for [her] has been trying to make everybody sound authentic without being trite.” which is foreseen as the biggest possible issue with the project.
Not only is there the fine balance of the integrity of the piece in whole, but the character of Cher is also more complex than people think. It’ll be interesting to see how well the new comic series nails the heroine in her smart wit, ingenuity, and general Beverly Hills naivete. So, optimism is the vibe from what has been seen so far. Overall, the info out in the web is pretty sparse, so we’ll just have to cling to the seat of our Jeeps in anticipation. All that can be said, though, definitively, is that a Clueless universe is coming, and I’m already wearing my tartan two piece.
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