Clueless is back — in comic book form.

BOOM! Studios surprised fans this past March with the announcement of an original graphic novel based on Amy Heckerling’s 1995 classic teen comedy Clueless, specifically telling the first official follow-up since the TV show that ran from 1996 to 1999. Titled Clueless: Senior Year, the book revisits Cher, Dionne and Tai, and tells the story of, you guessed it, their senior year of high school; picking up where the movie left off.

RELATED: Clueless Comic Book Adaptation Lands at BOOM! Studios

Clueless: Senior Year is written by Amber Benson (a writer/actor best known for her role as Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who actually auditioned for a role in Clueless) and Sarah Kuhn, the author of Heroine Complex. Together with artist Siobhan Keenan and colorist Shan Murphy, they were tasked to replicate the very distinct mid-’90s world of Clueless, while pushing the characters into new territory.

With Senior Year now in comic book stores, CBR talked in-depth with Benson and Kuhn about why Clueless has stood the test of time, nailing that ’90s slang, what makes comics the right medium for the story and whether a follow-up is possible — or even a good idea.

Clueless: Senior Year cover by Natacha Bustos.

CBR: Sarah, Amber, what are your thoughts on the enduring nature of Clueless? There were a lot of high school comedies in the ’90s, and Clueless stands above them. Wanted to get your thoughts why — other than it being a better movie than the rest of them — as to how this movie stands the test of time so much that there’s a comic books coming out 22 years later.

Sarah Kuhn: I think one thing is that it is based on a very timeless story by Jane Austen. I think that the story of Emma resonates over many years, and many decades, and especially to many women. I think that character is very special, because she definitely goes about things very single-mindedly, but she always has a good heart. She always has good intentions. She really is trying to help her friends, even though sometimes it may not seem like it. I think the movie was such a great modern version of that, that also had its own language. I think we are in agreement that everything Amy Heckerling wrote was super-brilliant and still stands the test of time.

It was a great modern version of that journey; a woman who is really trying to help her friends, thinks that she knows best, has her world upended a little bit, and then comes back around and does the right thing and grows as a person anyway. I think that’s a timeless story, and it was put into really great, modern context by Amy Heckerling — and of course with all the iconic catchphrases, outfits and little extras that make a story like that fun.

Amber Benson: Amy Heckling directed Fast Times at Ridgemont High — she didn’t write it, but she directed it. I think she just has a finger on the pulse of what kids are feeling and thinking. She understands that there’s a depth to teenagers that sometimes we forget about. We just expect teenagers to be shallow and overly dramatic — I think she understands that, yes, all of that applies to being a teenager, but there’s also a lot of truth to what teenagers feel and think. She’s really good at curating that. I think you see it in Clueless with the specificity of each of the characters — they’re so well-defined. There’s always somebody in the film that you can connect to. “Oh, I’m that person.” “I’m kind of like Cher, but then I take this other piece of Dionne…” You can just find something in each of the characters that you connect to, or there’s a specific character that you connect to. I think that’s a really difficult thing to do, and Amy Heckerling just kind of nailed it with Clueless.

You have to look at the actors, too. Brittany Murphy, Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash — these women really embodied those characters, and very much brought them to life in a very real way. We don’t just think of Cher as Cher, we think of Alicia as Cher. I think it was such a great collaborative effort, and I think that’s why it endures — it’s so specific to a time and place, the characters are so well drawn. It’s almost like they took a moment in time and put it in amber — I know that’s lame to reference my own name — but in a million years, you’ll be able to take the digital file and see the distilled ’90s in this movie.

Kuhn:: It’s a movie we can point to as something where every single element of it works, down to the song choices.

Given all of that, and like you said, how distinct these performances are, how distinct the movie is, and how it has existed effectively frozen in time for 22 years — how was the the experience of taking the characters and setting and specific 1995-ness of it all, and moving it forward, and putting new words in their mouths?

Benson: It was kind of a blast from the past, a return to being a teenager or early 20something. I don’t like to think about the clothing choices I made in 1995, but I would say that they’re in there in the movie. [Laughs] It felt like being a kid again, and for me, it was just so much to revisit that time in my life, and to think about the kind of person I was, and to get to curate and steer these characters in the direction that I think is fun and interesting, but also stays true to the film, hopefully, and stays true to what these characters are.

Part of the fun of it was doing it with Sarah, and with an amazing editorial group. We had so many awesome people working on this book with us. We all enjoyed being transported back to that time. Shannon [Watters], our editor, sent us this amazing compendium of sayings and phrases from that time, to make sure that we stayed true to the dialogue of the time. Sarah and I worked very hard — Sarah has a better ear for it than I do. Every time I would mess up, I’m like, “Sarah will fix it! Sarah will make it sound better!” [Laughs]

The phrase “toe-up”? Oh my god, when I saw that, I was like, “I remember people saying that!” Did we really say that? But we did.

Kuhn:: Yeah, that’s from the movie, too — “That girl is toe-up.” It’s one of the best parts of the movie. [Laughs] I will say that I don’t regret any of my fashion choices from the ’90s. I’m all about the return of chokers, the return of baby doll dresses with big boots.

It was fun to revisit that time. For both Amber and I, the ’90s were a special time in our lives. I think that what made it fun was that it wasn’t just pure nostalgia. In revisiting both the movie and coming up with this new story, I think we both really got into the idea that both of them are about young women are at an important point in their lives, and have to make some decisions. I think both of us can really relate to that — I think most people can. It was fun to be able to revisit that era, but also hopefully tell this story that is relevant to any time period.

Just on the nostalgia tip, I know that we enjoyed coming up with the song choices — we have this series of mix tapes throughout the book that are curated by different [characters], so it was fun to think about, what would this person put on a mix tape versus this other person. Obviously, Dionne and Josh have very different musical tastes and they would pick different songs. [Laughs] Then just going down deep Internet rabbit holes about things like, “What would be the right reference to the Spice Girls that’s actually correct for the year it’s in? Were they still together? Was Ginger still there?” That kind of thing was very fun for both of us.

Page 2: Why Clueless Works as a Comic Book, Possibility of a Sequel

Also curious to hear about the experience of making a comic book, specifically, from Clueless. At first, some people might think that isn’t the most natural choice, but when you think about comics outside of the American mainstream, it certainly fits. What was the process like of writing this story as a comic book story, and why did you discover about it was the right medium for this?

Benson: It’s a visual medium, and Clueless is so visual. It’s all about the clothes, and the look, and the vibe. You watch the movie, and you see these girls walking around with plaster on their noses because they’re all having nose jobs. If you talk about that in prose, it’s not as powerful as when you see it in the comic book. I think the fact that comics are a melding of visual and prose together, it’s the perfect medium for Clueless.

Kuhn: For sure. We had a lot of fun with that, because when we were thinking about making Clueless into a comic book, obviously we didn’t just want to exactly replicate what had already been done. We definitely used all the popular catchphrases — “as if” is in there, “toe-up” is in there — but we tried to make sure that we were expanding a little bit on that, so it wasn’t just the same thing over and over again.

The same thing with the visuals. We tried to think how we could convey Clueless without totally copying what had already been done. We had a lot of fun with figuring out what our splash pages were. There’s this motif where the girls are almost like the old-school Katy Keene paper doll pages, where it’s them and their accessories floating around them. We had a lot of fun with that.

And then just using the voiceover — I think voiceover is something that can be used to great effect in both comics and films. We tried to figure out how we could do that, and give it that “Cher voice” feel, while doing something that expanded upon Clueless.

Speaking of the distinct visuals in the film, what was it like collaborating with artist Siobhan Keenan, especially with the considerable task she had with being consistent with the clear visual palette from the film?

Benson: I think she did an incredible job. When we wrote the script, we tried to be as specific as possible about how we wanted it to look, and the way the panels were laid out, and where our splash pages were. Making sure that we had little cliffhangers at the end of every turn page so that people wanted to move on to the next thing and see what happens. I think the art in the book is captured beautifully — it looks like the film. It has the same color palette, the characters have the same vibe. It was brilliantly executed.

We were really, really happy when we saw it. You never know what’s going to happen — you collaborate with people, and you turn over your baby, and you hope that the baby comes out looking amazing. In this case, it truly, truly looks amazing. It’s a beautiful book, and it’s totally on the artist’s back. She totally nailed it.

Kuhn: I also want to give a shout-out to Shan Murphy, who was the colorist, who really brought out that candy palette — that sort of ’90s, Clueless candy palette, which gives it a lot of life.

Working with Siobhan was wonderful. She was great. We didn’t talk directly a lot, most of it was through our editors, but she was a great collaborator. One page we wanted to look like an old-school Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper, and she knew exactly what that was; and Shan’s colors really brought out that idea of, “I am so totally transported back to the ’90s right now, right down to the color palette.”

The official listing for this book says “Vol. 1” — are you leaving open the possibility of doing more with these characters?

Benson: Who knows? Vol. 1, right?

Kuhn: With any project like that, where it’s “Vol. 1,” I always say I’m totally open to it. Obviously, we love these characters. We love Amy Heckerling. We love working with these characters and bringing them to life. I think we’d always be open to revisiting them.

I’m not sure how far you want to follow the Clueless gang. The comic book covers their senior year. I’m not sure how much you want to follow them, like in a high school TV show where the characters graduate from high school — then it’s sort of, “What is this show about? Do we follow them into the senior citizen’s home?”

But never say never. I feel like Cher Horowitz would get up to a lot of super-entertaining adventures in the senior citizen home.

Benson: We really enjoyed working with BOOM!, too. BOOM! is doing a lot of really cool stuff, especially when it comes to gender and diversity. We’re really excited that Clueless is a part of that.

Kuhn: Things aimed at young girls. Woo-hoo!

Clueless: Senior Year is on sale now at comic book stores, and Aug. 29 in bookstores.