Comic book people probably are most familiar with Jillian Tamaki because of the graphic novel Skim that she did with her cousin Mariko Tamaki, but she’s an accomplished illustrator and comic creator on her own too. She has a recent collection out from Drawn and Quarterly called Inside Voice.

She started her talk with a slideshow of a lot of her illustrations. She talked about what she likes to do (more interpretive illustrations for science articles) and what she doesn’t (images of celebrities, mostly because she doesn’t think she’s great at likenesses). It was a fun glimpse into her process and I love people who are able to be creative for their job.

She then talked about comics and showed how she put together Skim. Mariko had given her a script but didn’t break it down panel by panel, so she had a lot of freedom to do what she wanted. She sketched it out in thumbnail form first and even put together a little book of her thumbnails to check on transitions and things like that. Since it was a pretty intense process and she didn’t have long to do it, she made jokes about being “unwashed” for a couple of weeks.

After her slideshow, Eric Nakamura of Giant Robot asked questions. She said it wasn’t bad collaborating with her cousin because they didn’t actually know each other very well at the point they started (they do now, however). She said Inside Voice was sort of born out of her sketch blog, which she started as a creative outlet. While she loves illustrating and feels like she can put a lot of herself in it, it’s to some art director’s whims. It allows her to do what she wants.

Both she and Nakamura discussed the process of getting started for young illustrators (basically, work for free. OK, that wasn’t so much the point, but they both agreed that sometimes it’s good to be out there even if you’re not getting paid). Tamaki also said she sees a disconnect between the illustration world and the comics world. When she goes to illustration cons, they know her for that and don’t know she does comics. At events like Comic-Con, it’s the other way around.

She was delightful and said many other things that have fallen out of my brain. So yes, I should go try to find a pen somewhere so this doesn’t happen again.

I was not fond of Mariko Tamaki‘s story for Emiko Superstar for the Minx line. It just struck me as false — oooh! Secret suburban lesbians! Roughly sketched performance artists! It felt like an adult’s conception of what a teen girl would find “edgy.” Some of the emotions were there but it didn’t strike me as being genuine.

But I still decided to give Skim a try, though. And I’m glad I did.

This is probably one of the most realistic portrayals of what it’s like to be a teenage girl anywhere — film, prose, comics, anywhere.

Kim, called Skim by her friends (because, as she puts it, she’s not) is a slightly overweight, half-Asian Canadian teenager attending an all-girls Catholic school. She and her best friend Lisa are studying Wicca. She is, for the most part, a non-distinct teenage girl. She’s not a cheerleader. She’s not popular. She’s not entirely an outcast — she’s just sort of there. She’s both too smart for her own good and innocently naive.

After a classmate’s ex-boyfriend kills himself, the school is covered in a veneer of sensitivity as Kim also develops a questionable relationship with drama teacher Ms. Archer. In someone else’s hands, this could cross into the territory of melodrama, but in Mariko Tamaki presents these events as just being a part of Kim’s life. The highs and lows are just matter of fact. Both the pain and the joy here are very real.

Jillian Tamaki‘s art is one part ukiyo-e and one part hyper-real caricature. It follows the shifts of Kim’s story from dreaminess to unfortunate reality. The changes are done subtly but beautifully and illustrates the forever-fluctuating life of a teenage girl.

I don’t really want to talk too much about the story, because for me, part of the joy is the way it unfolds. On the other hand, what happens isn’t as important as who it is happening to. While Kim isn’t always likable — she can certainly be bratty and selfish — she’s easy to relate to. She shows what it’s like to be a teenage girl.

Why the comics in the Minx line (even Mariko Tamaki’s one) couldn’t be more like this, I don’t know. I’d put this in the hands of any teenage girl I’d meet, or in the hands of anyone who wanted to know what it’s like. This is probably the best — or at the very least, the most surprising — graphic novel I’ve read this year.