Comicsgirl

When I repacked my stuff today, I forgot to pack a pen. I have at least seven pens in my possession while I’m here, but did any of them make it into my backpack this morning? Nope. So I wasn’t able to take notes during this, so it’ll be from my memory (and I’ve seem to already forgotten a lot of it. Sigh.)

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.

It’s a short but good interview.

I liked Skim quite a bit and I’m happy to recommend it to people.

“Being sixteen is officially the worst thing I’ve ever been.”

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.

(Also known as reviews of Emiko Superstar, Janes in Love and The New York Four.)

I read Emiko Superstar and Janes in Love back-to-back on the train returning home from MoCCA (which tells you how long I’ve had them — they were giving them out for free). I more recently read The New York Four.

Emiko Superstar Preorder from tfaw.com

Emiko Superstar, written by Mariko Tamaki with art by Steve Rolston, follows Emi, a slightly overweight and awkward half-Asian teenager in Canada as she finds herself drawn into an underground group of performance artists. I like Emi – I liked her geekier tendencies and her introspective nature. I didn’t exactly buy the whole performance artist scene – I didn’t believe that a guy who looked a lot like The Dude from The Big Lebowski would truly be able to get a group of young people to perform in a warehouse space, nor did I find Emi’s object of admiration, Poppy Galore, to really have that much going on. Her tentative, possible romance with Henry has a sweetness about it.

I did like the way everything unraveled, though, and how Emi realized everyone has secrets and can be surprising, including herself. Rolston’s art has a curvy softness about it that compliments the cuteness of the story well. But ultimately, I found Emiko Superstar to be fairly forgettable.

Janes In Love Buy from tfaw.com

Janes in Love picks up where The Plain Janes left off, with the same creative team of novelists Cecil Castellucci and artist Jim Rugg. I think it’s basically pointless to read this if you haven’t read The Plain Janes first. To me, it was more of the same. The Janes are now dealing with the fallout after the bust-up of P.L.A.I.N. and find themselves drifting apart as boys enter the scene. The main Jane seeks a way to continue making public art while dealing with her mom’s reluctance to leave the house after a friend dies from an anthrax attack. I noticed a very subtle shift in Rugg’s art, emphasizing the various Janes’ ethnicities (I did a side-by-side comparison and the style isn’t that different, but it’s there). This one fell a little flat and felt a little unnecessary to me (I’ve read there will be a third one). Whereas the first book was about the girls’ self-discovery, they didn’t have enough to do in this one. The conclusion and reunification of the Janes came across as a little too neat for me.

And after I finished this one, I realized something about Minx: all the books have the same sorts of rhythm. They all emphasize some Big Important Life Lesson. They all share the same sort of pacing and the characters all have the same sort of epiphanies and self-discoveries. They all seem to learn that in the end, it’s best to be true to yourself.

I do think that’s an important message and one that teenage girls don’t hear enough, but the more I read of the Minx books, the more preachy they feel. Instead of being art or even entertainment first, they seem to be lessons in self-esteem. They seem to be more the sorts of books well-meaning adults and comic book bloggers (myself included) think teenagers should be reading. (I did a quick bit of research on some message boards where teenage girls hang out – I didn’t spend too long because I didn’t want to be creepy – and I didn’t find any mentions of any of the Minx books. I’m not sure if teenage girls are actually reading these.)

But I still keep picking them up. I keep giving them a chance.

The New York Four Buy from tfaw.com

I was surprised to see that The New York Four comes closest to what I think Minx can be capable of. Coming from Vertigo veterans Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, the story follows reclusive Riley as she reunites with her sister and tries to make friends during her first year of NYU. The New York setting feels like the real New York (I like Wood’s little asides in his NYC 101 lessons) and not just some “exotic” tacked on locale. This is the New York where people actually live. Riley is an interesting heroine and as it’s delightfulas she breaks out of her shell. The rest of the “New York Four” – Merissa, Lona and Ren – feel a little undeveloped but I get the feeling Wood and Kelly plan to continue this story. While I think Kelly draws the girls a little too sexy, with over-emphasized lips and prominent bustlines, his art has an attractive grittiness to it.

But while Riley has her share of disappointments and Big Life Lessons – and, of course, discovers it’s best to be herself – this book felt different. There was drama. There was anger and love. There was uncomfortable situations. There was, in other words, the sorts of things teenage girls encounter every day.

I know that Karen Berger said that Minx is “real stories about real girls in the real world,” but I can’t help but want it to be more like the manga series Nana. Granted, in its own way, Nana is about as far from reality as you can get, despite not being fantasy, but underneath its rock-star melodrama, it feels real. It’s heartfelt while still being escapist. I want to feel the same way after I’ve read a Minx title.