Coming April 1st, 2025, Raina Telgemeier and I are proud to finally release our new middle-grade graphic novel from Scholastic: The Cartoonists Club!

Makayla is bursting with ideas but doesn’t know how to make them into a story. Howard loves to draw, but he struggles to come up with ideas and his dad thinks comics are a waste of time. Lynda constantly draws in her sketchbook but keeps focusing on what she feels are mistakes, and Art simply loves being creative and is excited to try something new. They come together to form The Cartoonists Club, where kids can learn about making comics and use their creativity and imagination for their own storytelling adventures!

The project was born years ago, when Raina, myself, and my family were at a Scholastic party at Comic-Con in San Diego, and Raina casually suggested that she and I team up someday to create a sort of Understanding Comics for kids. My family was, like, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” and a few years later we all decided to make it a reality.

Raina and I collaborated closely on the book, tossing ideas, sketches, and whole sequences back and forth until it was hard to tell which parts came from which cartoonist—a true collaboration. Once the script and layout were finished (after three intense drafts), Raina penciled the kids and their “real life” interactions and I drew all of the artwork that the kids themselves created. Then it was inked by Ray Baehr and colored by Beniam C. Hollman.

The Cartoonists Club does indeed have sequences reminiscent of my books like Understanding Comics and Making Comics, but in the end, it was the stories of the kids themselves that we fell in love with. It truly is a story about friendship, and about why we cartoonists do what we do. A real love letter to the joys of making stories and art.

And naturally, Raina and I will be going on tour for the book starting in April! Kick-off events at right. (And YES, we’ll be hitting other cities in time; we’ll keep you posted.)

See you soon!

Here’s one from the vaults. A one-page comic I did in 2004 for the short-lived Prophecy Magazine. Since very few people saw it at the time, I figured I’d share it here.

(Bigger jpg here.)

Thanks to Dirk, I have seen that two-page spread, and I have to say I’m with the Spivock family 100% on this one. Sex is a legitimate topic in all media, including explicit depictions, but putting vodka in mayonnaise jars is just not fair to consumers.

Just had the pleasure (via Bob Weil at Norton) of devouring an advance copy of illustrator David Small’s Stitches: A Memoir due out this fall. Get it and read it when the time comes, it’s strong stuff. Small comes to comics via children’s books, but he’s deadly serious about the form, and exploits it masterfully to paint an unforgettable picture of his harrowing childhood.

There are some amazing books on their way in the next several months. David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp is imminent (just assuming that one’s amazing like everyone else—poor David) and I recently got advance peeks at Hope Larson‘s Mercury and Vera Brosgol‘s in-progress GN for First Second, both of which are the best work to date from these two powerful cartoonists.

Comics is changing. Behind the drawing table, people who would have been content splashing about in other fields a decade ago are swimming to comics’ deep end without even taking a breath. And on the drawing table, there’s a growing understanding of comics’ power to relate emotion, POV, and the warp and weave of memory. The compact, literal, rat-a-tat of post-Kirby mainstream storytelling that I started out reading is finally giving away to something far deeper, stranger, and potentially more beautiful.

Comics may not have its Beethoven yet, but he/she might just be reading this stuff in a year or two, between Math and Social Studies, and realizing for the first time just what they want to do when they grow up.

Still catching my breath after China, but three more trips loom in the next five weeks. First Manhattan for the two-day seminar. Then Toronto, where the whole family will be joining me for TCAF, a show we’ve wanted to do for a while and which we’re all very much looking forward to. Then I’ll be swinging by Barcelona for the 27th Annual Comics Festival there.

Despite a busy spring, my travel schedule will cool down for the rest of the year as I focus increasingly on my new graphic novel for First Second, The Sculptor. In fact, the Manhattan seminar will be doubling as reference-taking for that story which takes place in New York City.

We announced The Sculptor before the blog relaunched, and I haven’t written much about the project here because it’s still in the very early stages, but hardly a minute goes by at home or abroad when I’m not thinking about it. As exciting as China was, I couldn’t wait to get back to the studio and resume work on this story. I may be away for 12 out of the next 37 days, but I’ll be devoting the remaining 25 days—and the 1,000 days that follow it—to finally using everything I’ve learned in 25 years to tell a story I love, as clearly and effectively as I possibly can.