When two of the most influential storytellers in modern comics decide to team up, you pay attention. Bookshop Santa Cruz is bringing that dream collaboration to the Rio Theatre this week, hosting The Cartoonists’ Club—a new book and a family-friendly live event from New York Times best-selling creators Scott McCloud and Raina Telgemeier.
For parents who came of age reading McCloud’s Understanding Comics or Telgemeier’s Smile, this pairing is something like seeing Lennon and McCartney pick up pencils instead of guitars. The result is a richly illustrated invitation into the art and heart of making comics. It’s a guide for young creators that demystifies how pictures and words can spark emotion, humor and empathy.
Years in the Making
Telgemeier conceived the project after realizing how many of her young readers were hungry to learn how comics work. Her own creative awakening had come years earlier through McCloud’s landmark 1993 analysis of the medium, a book that treated panels, gutters and speech balloons as elements of a sophisticated visual language. She’d long wished she could hand a version of that book to the nine-year-olds who lined up at her signings. Eventually, she decided to make it herself and to ask the man who had inspired her to join in.
The collaboration took roughly five years to complete. Both artists poured their experience into characters designed to mirror the discovery and vulnerability of early creativity. The story follows four kids—Michaela, Howard, Art and Linda—each drawn to comics for different reasons: curiosity, self-expression, connection or the simple thrill of drawing worlds that didn’t exist yesterday.
The Spirit of the Book
McCloud sees a bit of himself in Art, the inquisitive experimenter who wants to test everything. As a boy, he treated comics as a laboratory for ideas, a mix of science, art and storytelling that felt infinite in scope. Telgemeier gravitates toward Linda, the shy artist who hesitates to share her sketchbook until she finds the courage to show her work. Through that act of opening up, she discovers both friends and a voice.
That dynamic—the moment a child’s private imagination becomes a shared language—sits at the center of The Cartoonists’ Club. The book gently encourages kids to let their creativity be seen, to take risks, and to understand that art becomes powerful when it connects one person’s inner world to another’s.
McCloud calls that courage “the real magic trick” of art: when curiosity and vulnerability combine. Telgemeier frames it as an invitation for young storytellers to find the version of themselves that draws from joy rather than fear. The tone throughout is playful, visual, and full of practical examples that make even complex ideas like perspective, pacing and composition feel accessible to a grade-schooler.
What to Expect at the Rio
The Santa Cruz stop promises more than a routine reading. McCloud and Telgemeier are known for turning presentations into performance art. Expect a kinetic slideshow that unspools like an animated comic strip, with panels sliding and morphing in sync to their narration. Telgemeier will do live drawing on stage, showing kids how a blank page turns into a character before their eyes. McCloud, ever the theorist, plans to punctuate the visuals with interactive games that let the audience test how pictures and words work together.
It’s part classroom, part comedy, part creative pep talk, and a chance for kids to see that the people who make books are still playing, experimenting and sometimes making mistakes on purpose just to see what happens next.
Parents will recognize a second layer here: this is a conversation between two generations of comics thinkers. McCloud spent decades convincing the world that comics were serious art. Telgemeier spent the last 20 years proving that they could also be intimate, funny and emotionally true. In doing so, she brought a new wave of readers into the medium. Their partnership closes that circle, offering the next generation both a toolbox and a reason to use it.
The Event
For Santa Cruz families, the event promises to be a night of big screens, fast sketches and creative energy in motion. Telgemeier and McCloud will be affirming to Santa Cruz kids that stories still start simply, with pencils, paper and a willingness to share what’s inside. The Cartoonists’ Club itself is less a manual than a gentle reminder that art isn’t about talent so much as imagination, persistence and play.
Bookshop Santa Cruz’s presentation at the Rio Theatre will bring that message to life for one evening and show how comics come alive when passed from hand to hand, generation to generation, panel by panel.
Tickets for the Bookshop Santa Cruz event are $22.99 per person, which covers everything—tax, fees, and a copy of The Cartoonists’ Club. Each attendee, adults and kids alike, will need their own ticket. Every ticket comes with two barcodes: one grants entry to the Rio Theatre program; the other is redeemed for the complimentary book.
The evening includes a 45-minute visual presentation and conversation with the creators, followed by a live audience Q&A and a photo opportunity—one picture per ticketholder—with Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud. Attendees also receive an exclusive signed bookplate and a free tote bag as keepsakes from the event.
Scott McCloud and Raina Telgemeier and The Cartoonists Club: 6pm on Oct. 28 at the Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. Tickets: $22.99. bookshopsantacruz.com
