Week of 6/16/2025

This week, Bob starts his first work day on The Shapes, I'm busy with markets, and review The Cartoonist Club, Raina's Telgemeier's first book in over 5 years!

The Shapes

Bob’s 1st Day of Work 5-6

News

Today, it’s double duty on the events agenda!

Ybor City Art Walk

I’m vending at Ybor Art Walk from 2-6 PM, held throughout Ybor City. You can find me at the Spookeasy Lounge.

Hey! Market

Right afterward, from 7-11 PM, I’m vending at Hey! Market at Cafe Hey in Tampa, where I’ll be part of a stamp rally. If you don’t know what that is, you can read my breakdown of it from last week’s update. If that’s not enough of an incentive to come, there’ll be live music performances in the cafe throughout the market!

Sammy the Critic

The Cartoonist Club Review

It feels like yesterday since I read and reviewed Raina Telgemeier’s last book, Guts, but then, I’m reminded that 2019 was nearly six bloody years ago (and no, I won’t link the review, you can go find it yourself). A time before COVID, when I was starting out writing book reviews on Goodreads and the idea of publishing my comics was still a mere ambition. So you can bet I was agog when I saw an entire table of copies at Barnes & Noble of her newest effort, The Cartoonist Club, a very unexpected but welcome collaboration with Scott McCloud that I brought and gobbled up.

The graphic novel follows a group of four middle-school kids who form an after-school cartooning club that meets regularly to make comics in the library. With the guidance of the librarian Fatima, they learn the ways of the medium and how to apply that knowledge to their creative works.

Essentially, this book is Understanding Comics for middle-grade readers, which is even acknowledged in the behind-the-scenes section. The plot is chiefly a vehicle to educate readers about the comics creation process. While this may lend to misgivings of didacticism, I can’t think of a better way to approach the subject matter. If the book were a straightforward instructional guide, its reach would be limited to readers expressly interested in that niche. However, connecting it with a story using Telgemeier’s star power in the children’s literary space means it’ll be read by a general audience of young readers, many of whom will likely be creatively inspired by it.

As someone familiar with both creators’ works, I could tell who wrote which parts. The storytelling elements are very much in line with Telgemeier’s usual graphic novels while the educational aspects are informed by McCloud’s decades-long cartooning expertise. Despite their different writing styles, they mesh well for what it’s worth. As always, Telgemeier’s character designs are distinctive, and so are her characterizations, for the most part. Howard is the goofball personality who naturally would be drawn in (pun unintended) to comics’ caricaturish qualities. Lynda is a perfectionist who’s self-conscious of her craft. Art is the inventive kid who embraces their quirkiness, and Makayla is the imaginative girl dealing with writer’s block on how to approach her comic ideas. That said, I think Makayla could have used more fleshing out. While we get to learn about the other children’s family background throughout The Cartoonist Club, due to how strongly it ties in to their character arcs and personalities, the most we know about Makayla’s background is that she comes from a huge family— seen shortly in the beginning— who’s constantly busy. Not that I believe Makayla’s parents or upbringing needed to play a significant role in her arc, but seeing more of her home life could have contextualized how that informs her work.

Through Fatima’s character, McCloud breaks down complex ideas in comics theory without talking down to the target audience or alienating them with pedantic abstractions. While the fourth-wall breaks are a tad over-the-top for a slice-of-life comic, I’m able to forgive it since it advances the character arcs.

Overall, The Cartoonist Club is absolutely worth the wait, excelling as both a middle-grade and comics theory book. If anyone is going to indoctrinate children into cartooning, there’s no better candidate than Raina Telgemeier! You can find or order it wherever books are sold.