Photo by Marion Vitus

Raina Telgemeier grew up in San Francisco, but made her way to New York City when she was 22 to attend the School of Visual Arts as an Illustration and Cartooning student. She received her BFA in 2002, and has worked as a freelance artist ever since. Her comics have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Eisner, Ignatz, Cybil, and Web Cartoonists’ Choice awards.

Raina lives in Queens, NY, with her husband, Dave Roman.

When did you start reading comics? Did you always want to make them?

I started reading the funnies in my local newspaper, The San Francisco Chronicle, when I was nine. My favorites were Calvin and Hobbes and For Better or For Worse. I started making my own 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 SMILE was born out of a need to get the whole experience down on paper, since I spent so much time telling people about it.

And how about the X-Men manga you wrote? You seem to be involved in a lot of different kinds of projects!

I was approached by the editors at Del Rey Manga, who liked my Baby-sitters Club adaptations, and thought I might be a good candidate to write an X-Men series aimed at teen girl readers. I recruited my husband Dave to co-write the series with me, and the artwork was done by an Indonesian artist named Anzu. We had a lot of fun working on the project--we got to take all the things we liked about shoujo manga, and the X-Men, and throw them into a blender together. Dave and I have written two volumes of X-men: Misfits. The first volume is on store shelves now; the second volume will be out sometime in late 2010.

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 no. 2 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. If my comics are going to be in color (in the case of SMILE), they are colored entirely in Photoshop. I work on an iMac, with a Wacom tablet. I used to dislike working digitally, but I enjoy it more and more, the more I do it.

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 into a mini-comic, I do! My mini-comic series, Take-Out, ran for seven issues. I also write and draw a series called Outreach, about the experiences I have while teaching. I only sell these at conventions, so keep an eye on my events page to see if I'll be in a city near you anytime soon.

Will you be drawing more Baby-sitters Club comics?

I was contracted to draw four BSC graphic novels, and at the moment, I don't have plans to draw any more. I loved working on them, so it's possible I will create more in the future. I'm not done making graphic novels, though! I plan to keep writing and drawing books for a very long time.

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!

Are you interested in collaborating on graphic novels in the future?

Maybe. Serious queries should go through my agent, Judy Hansen.

Will you come speak at my school/library/conference/convention/company picnic?

Sure! Please see my Author Visits Page for more information.