Frequently Asked Questions
When did you start reading comics? Did you always want to make them?
I started reading the funnies in my local newspaper when I was nine. My favorites were Calvin and Hobbes and For Better or For Worse. I started making comic strips around the same time, and realized I liked putting pictures and words together to tell stories.
How’d you get a job drawing Baby-sitters Club comics for Scholastic? Was it your idea?
Kind of. I met the editors at Scholastic when they were starting up the Graphix imprint, and they were looking for new artists to do projects. I brought a few original ideas to them, but nothing that was really ‘ready to go.’ So they asked what I read when I was young, and when I said I’d been a BSC fan, their eyes lit up and they said, "THAT might make a good graphic novel! Want to do some sketches?" And that was that.
What about SMILE - did you really knock your two front teeth out?
Yes! It’s all true. I was in sixth grade when I fell and knocked out my teeth, and I have been dealing with the consequences ever since. I had braces, a lot of surgery, and a lot of awkward smiles as a result. The comic will tell that story up until my life at age 15.
What do you use to make your comics?
I sketch out all my pages on plain 8.5 x 11 paper, and then create a full-sized version of those sketches on Bristol board, using a Col-erase light blue colored pencil. Over that, I pencil each panel pretty tightly with an F graphite pencil. Panel borders (and sometimes lettering, if I’m doing it by hand) are inked with a Faber Castell F pen. Finally, I ink over the penciled drawings with Dr. Martin’s waterproof India ink and a Windsor & Newton sable brush, and erase the pencil lines with a Staedtler Mars plastic eraser.
Black and white art is scanned into the computer at 1200 dpi, and I make corrections and adjustments in Photoshop. If the comic is being lettered digitally (in the case of the BSC comics), the files are sent to the letterer, who uses a font based on my handwriting to put in the text. He creates the word balloons, too.
Are you still making mini-comics?
When I have time, I still draw short comics, and when I have enough short comics to put together a new issue of Take-Out, I will! However, at the moment I’m pretty busy with the BSC graphic novels, and I’m focusing on SMILE, which is the longest story I’ve ever written.
How many Baby-sitters Club comics are you going to do? Will you be adapting all of the books into comic form?
Well, there were 131 books in the original series…and countless spin-off books. Each graphic novel takes me about a year to draw, so I’d be a very old lady by the time I finished adapting all of them. Currently, I’m contracted for four. I’m working on the fourth one, Claudia and Mean Janine, right now.
Didn’t you get engaged in an interesting way? I think I read about it on the internet or something.
Yeah, Dave came up with a really amazing way to ask me to marry him. He drew this comic, and gave it to me while we were on a plane. Later, I drew the rest of the comic, and we put it online. A lot of people were able to read it that way, including many, many people we had never met, but who were excited for us anyway!
Recommended Reading
If you like reading my comics, here are some other books you will enjoy.
For Young Readers
For Older Readers
