The Cartoonists Club by Raina Telgemeier & Scott McCloud

If you knew nothing else, and heard that Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud had made a graphic novel together under the title The Cartoonists Club, what would you think?

Most of us would say something flippant like "Oh, it must be Understanding Comics, but for pre-teens, and in Telgemeier's art style!"

And...that's pretty much exactly what The Cartoonists Club really is. There's a fictional story wrapping it all together, but that's mostly an excuse to investigate the various worlds of comics, with a focus on how to make them. (Creators have the unshakeable belief that all of us really want to spend vast hours making stories, which is an adorable misconception. As my old boss would say, why spend a year writing a novel when a really good one only costs a few dollars? Most people think that way.)

How was this book made? Luckily, they tell you: Telgemeier and McCloud co-wrote, co-thumbnailed, and co-scripted. Telgemeier laid it out and did the main-character art, inked by Ray Baehr; McCloud added all of the metacomics (ones made by characters in the book) and similar stuff. It was colored by Beniam C. Hollman and lettered by Jessie Post. There's a process section in the back detailing how all of this worked, listing people and stages and activities and even the tools used - this book very much aims to be used as a model or template by a generation of wannabe cartoonists, so it's explicit in many places about how to do these things.

The story itself is about four middle-school students - Makayla, Howard, Art, and Lynda - who start the title club with their school's media specialist, Ms. Fatima. They each have different styles and ideas and concerns, but all four really like to draw and really want to make stories once they realize that's possible. Once they meet and form the club, the book is a series of chapters, each one of which introduces another aspect of comics - including tools, minicomics, genres and types of stories, showing feelings through facial expressions and body language, how comics tell stories through separate drawings, the splendor of the blank page, art styles and collaboration, and showing off your work at a local comics show.

It is all encouraging and positive and age-appropriate and enticing. If you have any impulse in you whatsoever to make comics - my drawing skills are sub-basement-level; don't ask me - it will make you want to pull out that vague idea you used to have and see if you can sketch it up. It does assume an audience of people who want to tell stories and can draw, which I suspect is vastly less common than Telgemeier and McCloud believe. But, for those who fit into that intersection, or are just interested in how comics are made, it's an energetic exercise in you-can-do-it!-ism.