Amber Benson and Sarah Kuhn Talk the 'Clueless' Comic Book Soundtrack, And Why It's There

08/23/2017 07:30 pm EDT

Your favorite characters from the '90s teen classic Clueless arrived in comic shops today, and thanks to Clueless: Senior Year co-writers Sarah Kuhn and Amber Benson, they brought their tunes with them.

The comic features a mixtape-style soundtrack -- and it's one that fans can see popping up on the page throughout in the same way the pill bottles and such showed up in Fight Club 2, sometimes obscuring the art but always serving a very specific storytelling purpose.

"I was a teenager/early twenties at that time," Benson told ComicBook.com. "The '90s was so music-heavy for me that I didn't have to do a lot of searching of the music I put in there, and everything we put in there, Sarah and I listened to ourselves. We both felt like it was really important because music was so much a part of the film that to have it not be part of the comic book would just be silly. We worked in tandem to make sure the soundtracks were cohesive and that they were specific to each character's point-of-view. It was really important to us to maintain the music through the comic book."

"I remember having my Clueless CD and that being a super-prized possession," added Kuhn. "I feel like that was an era where the soundtrack was kind of its own thing — like the soundtrack to Clueless could be one of your favorite CDs. It was important to us to preserve that because it gives you a little bit of that cinematic feeling when you're reading. I know it helped us to imagine what the scene was like if we could imagine what song went along with it."

The Clueless soundtrack, much like the one for Josie and the Pussycats, which will get a reissue in September through Mondo, is a gem that fans can own and listen to independent of the movie itself, although it certainly helps to set a certain tone for the film.

"The Clueless soundtrack is worth memorializing because you don't need to be a '90s kid to enjoy it. It's an inventive collection of varying genres that coalesce to embody a particular moment in time," wrote Stereogum's Gabriela Tully Claymore in a 2015 retrospective celebrating the soundtrack's 20th anniversary.

In Clueless: Senior Year, your favorite girls from Beverly Hills are back in an all-new adventure! It's senior year and Cher, Dionne, and Tai find themselves in a bit of a crisis of self… Where are they meant to go, and what are they meant to DO after high school? Luckily they have all year—and each other's help—to figure it out!

You can pick up a copy of Clueless: Senior Year in comic shops now, at bookstores next week, or order a digital copy here, and check out some preview pages in the attached image gallery.

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