jillian tamaki

The 27th Annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards took place at the Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton Bayfront San Diego on Friday night, and it was a great night for diversity, for women in comics, for comics aimed at a younger audience, and for the future of the industry.

San Diego Comic-Con is underway, bringing over 130,000 people to enjoy the pop culture extravaganza taking place inside and outside the convention center. There is a lot to see and do every day during SDCC. More likely than not, if you don't go in with a plan for experiencing the things that you most want to check out, you'll miss them!

This One Summer's artist Jillian Tamaki's next book was just released, and it's very different to her collaborations with her cousin Mariko, which also include 2008's Skim. The Drawn and Quarterly-published SuperMutant Magic Academy collects Tamaki's webcomic of the same name, featuring a cast of characters of unusual abilities, backgrounds and appearances, who all attend the same private school. What is perhaps most extraordinary about the characters --- who include fox spirit Wendy, immortal Everlasting Boy, and aggressive performance artist Frances --- is just how familiar they all are under their unfamiliar surfaces. SMMA is a comic about a special school full of special kids, but it focuses on the parts of them that aren't special... or at least, the parts that they have in common with us. Which, of course, helps makes the comic special. Tamaki is currently touring to promote SMMA. We took the opportunity to talk to her about her work.

If you haven't been following it, Youth in Decline's Frontier is a comic that you should buy every single issue of --- and you can start anywhere. Frontier is created by a different cartoonist every issue, and the only real through-line is that it highlights talented creators. For that reason alone, it's worth checking out. Each one also offers the opportunity to see those creators do an interesting story that maybe they don't have another space to publish. Some of the great creators that have told stories in Frontier include Emily Carroll, Sam Alden, Jillian Tamaki, and Hellen Jo --- with creators like Michael DeForge and Becca Tobin to come.

The butter tart is one of Canada's great cultural contribtutions to the world. The Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) also fits squarely in that category. So it's apt that these two juggernauts of the North have come together this weekend --- the very weekend of TCAF --- in the form of a handy map of Toronto's finest butter tarts created by two of TCAF's critically acclaimed guests; Super Mutant Magic Academy author Jillian Tamaki, and Ant Colony author Michael DeForge. If you're hitting up the festival this weekend, you may want to set aside a little time for a butter tart pilgrimage.

The American Library Association (ALA) announced their yearly awards today in conjunction with the ALA Midwinter Conference in Chicago. In a groundbreaking move, a Newbery Honor has been awarded to cartoonist Cece Bell for her graphic novel El Deafo. This is the first time a Newbery Honor has ever been awarded to a comic. At the same awards, Jillian and Mariko Tamaki won a Caldecott Honor and a Printz Honor for their graphic novel This One Summer.

Jillian Tamaki’s work is a triumph of contradiction. It is lush, yet spare. Emotional, yet understated. Detailed, yet intriguingly simple. It is, at all times, astonishingly good. While reading This One Summer, which she created with her cousin, writer Mariko Tamaki, I found myself regularly putting the book down to better absorb the power of her pen. “Look at this!” I said, thrusting the book at nearby friends. “Look at that ocean! Look at those hands! Look at this part, where she does that flowy thing with the hair!” And my friends would look, and nod, and ask where I’d bought my copy so they could get one too. As I strolled the aisles of the 2014 Small Press Expo, talk of Tamaki’s work was everywhere. Other creators I interviewed name-dropped This One Summer. Fans referenced Super Mutant Magic Academy, her soon-to-be-print-published webcomic, as a favorite. Aspiring artists called her an inspiration. She became, over the course of the weekend, an Ignatz Award winner. In the midst of this well-earned celebration, ComicsAlliance sat down with her to talk success, adolescence, and what’s coming next.

We may still be in the thick of spring, but First Second is getting ready for the May 6 release of This One Summer by writer Mariko Tamaki and artist Jillian Tamaki, prolific Canadian cousins known for a variety of solo works on top of their 2008 collaboration, the graphic novel Skim. Set in a quiet beach town, This One Summer shows readers the culmination of preteen Rose's vacation, which deviate

2014 promises to bring a flood of amazing work from a raft of talented cover artists, writers, web cartoonists, interior artists and mangaka. ComicsAlliance has looked at the new projects on the horizon and made a pick of 14 comic creators who we think will make an impact in 2014. Our hope is that this is just the tip of the iceberg, that there are 140 amazing creators on the cusp of creating something great in 2014 -- but these are our picks of the creators to keep an eye on.

The first issue of "Strange Tales II" arrived this week in comic shops, the next volume in Marvel's anthology of indie artists trying their hand at superhero stories set in the Marvel Universe. This time around we've got web stars like Kate Beaton and Nicholas Gurewitch, acclaimed indie creators like Rafael Grampa and Jillian Tamaki, Dash Shaw, Kevin Huizenga, Shannon Wheeler, Frank Sant