INTERVIEW & GIVEAWAY: Alisa Kwitney Turns Back Time in G.I.L.T

A door opens to reveal two middle aged women, one is shocked and the other looks devious

What if you could go back in time and fix a thing or two in your past? In a Golden Girls meets Twilight Zone meets Sex and the City escapade called G.I.L.T., creator Alisa Kwitney explores this very question. “[I]f you travel back in time, the only way to create any change would be to retain the awareness of your more mature self,” Kwitney muses in an interview with WWAC. “But how much of our pasts do we remember accurately? What have we forgotten, about that time, about ourselves and our friends? How long could we hold on to our resolution to make a change while immersed in the world and influences of the past? And that’s not even touching on how damn hard it is to make a big change in the present. Of course, everything would be easier if you could just go back in time like Kathleen Turner in the film Peggy Sue Got Married and realize that your ex-husband is an incredibly annoying Nicolas Cage character. But real life is never that simple.”

In Ahoy Comics’ G.I.L.T — short for the Guild of Independent Lady Temporalists — unlikely time-travelers Hildy and Trista revisit their surprisingly intertwined past thanks to a time portal in Hildy’s Manhattan apartment. Dragged back to 1973 and bouncing through several important decades and moments, they each must come to terms with their past, present, and future. Along the way, they must follow the co-op board’s one major rule: Do not alter the past without co-op board approval.

G.I.L.T. adds itself to the list of excellent life-altering time travel stories, blending the sharp wit of grumpy, chain-smoking Hildy with Trista’s self-absorbed attitude to create dramatic results that artist Mauricet nails with perfect comedic timing. Here, Kwintey takes a moment to answer a couple of questions about the magic of time travel and feisty older ladies.

What are some of your favorite time-traveling stories? What is it you like about them?

I just finished reading This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub, which is my new favorite time travel book. It actually took me five months to finish because every word stung and resonated. She was singing my seventies Upper West Side childhood with her words, to paraphrase seventies soul singer Roberta Flack. Not that you need to have passed Pomander Lane on your way to grade school the way I did to appreciate Straub’s book. It is about children and parents, about aging and loss, and the transient durability of youth. “He had been young, and she had been young,” Straub’s protagonist muses, thinking about the father of her childhood. “They had been young together. Why was it so hard to see that, how close generations were?”

I also loved both seasons of the TV show Russian Doll, which has a lot of common DNA with Groundhog Day, but is interested in place as well as in people. In Groundhog Day, the town feels like it exists in the Twilight Zone. In Russian Doll, the New York of decades past is a character as well.

Going back further in time, I’d recommend Jack Finney’s novel Time and Again, which is an illustrated novel and has a lovely take on the frames through which we see the past, but is also just a fun love story that takes us touring around old New York.

As for poignant takes on aging, I’d recommend Frederic Brown’s short story “Nightmare in Grey.” Oh, and I can’t forget The Time Traveler’s Wife! Audrey Niffenegger’s novel was my introduction to the idea of a time traveler whose travels were confined to his lifespan. I waited a decade before playing with my own version of that idea in G.I.L.T.

We don’t often get to see older leading ladies in comics. Why was it important to you to have Hildy and Trista represent this age group?

Well, because I’m in my fifties, and I hope to eventually be in my seventies! As a little girl, I remember visiting the public library on 100th and Amsterdam and saying to my mother, “Why are all the books about little boys?” She said, “Because little girls don’t mind reading about little boys, but little boys don’t want to read about little girls.” I told her I wanted to read stories about girls like myself, and she retold the story as a kind of feminist awakening. So now I want to read stories about folks at my stage of life, and older. I want to read about women over forty traveling and falling in love and making mistakes and dealing with grown children and aging parents. I want to indulge in nostalgia for the nineties and eighties and seventies, but I also want to revisit those decades like a sociologist.

These days, there’s a lot of talk about the “pro-aging” movement, so I know I’m part of a trend. But it’s early days. A few weeks ago, I went into Sephora to get my makeup done for the New York Comic Con Harvey Awards. Now, the makeup artist might have known how to create a smokey eye for a sixteen-year-old, but she clearly had no idea what to do with an eye that had seen Times Square back when it was filled with porno theaters. Still, it was worth the cash I spent, because eventually, I will write about a woman who is forced to attend some major event looking like Pennywise the Clown.


GIVEAWAY: Get yourself a copy of G.I.L.T.! Fill out this form for your chance to win a copy of the collected edition of G.I.L.T. from Ahoy Comics.  Contest closes November 18, 4pm EST. The winner will be contacted via email. U.S. citizens only.

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Wendy Browne

Wendy Browne

Publisher, mother, geek, executive assistant sith, gamer, writer, lazy succubus, blogger, bibliophile. Not necessarily in that order.

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