At various times in her life, Misako Takashima, who goes by the pen name Misako Rocks!, has been an exchange student, a puppeteer, and a professional cartoonist. She got her big break, as illustrator of The Onion’s Savage Love column, on the strength of a few doodles she did while having dinner with friends. Now she has two graphic novels in print, Biker Girl and Rock and Roll Love, and a three-book series, Detective Jermain, in the works. The New York Public Library recently named Rock and Roll Love to its 2008 Books for the Teen Age list (PDF). Takashima recently designed a new character for Archie Comics: Kumi, a Japanese exchange student.

Brigid Alverson: What inspired you to write graphic novels?

Misako Takashima: I was really depressed because of my relationship with a boyfriend. I felt that relationship was really horrible, I was really tired, and I thought, “I am going to go to Japan, but before I give up on my life in America, I am going to challenge myself.” So I made 16 pages of Rock and Roll Love, and I drew doodles of Biker Girl, and I started calling all the publishers in New York City. Since I came from Wisconsin, everybody gave me time—“Oh come over, we can talk.” Hyperion and some other publishers really loved my ideas, especially Rock and Roll Love, and then Hyperion offered me two book deals.

BA: Rock and Roll Love is the story of a Japanese teenager who moves to the U.S. to find a rock musician boyfriend—and succeeds. How much of it is autobiographical?

MT: All of it. Have you ever watched the movie Back to the Future? I had a huge crush on Michael J. Fox—in the book they said I couldn’t say the real name—and some other movie actors, and I thought I was going to be their girlfriend. I thought I would move to America and have a cute rock-star American boyfriend. I made those punk rock friends in Missouri, they are still my friends, and my best friend in the book is a school teacher in Chicago now.

BA: Are all the members of your family police officers, like in the book?

MT: Yes. Until last year they still didn’t like what I was doing here. They wanted me to become a cop, an international bilingual cop, and it’s so impossible for me to be like that. Finally they admitted it, and they are proud of my career right now.

BA: Was it difficult to write about yourself?

MT: Not at all. Actually it’s more easy for me to draw and write about myself.

BA: How do you create a book?

MT: I start the outline first. I draw head shapes, really rough panel movements, for whole pages, and then I start adding a script.

BA: Who do you see as the audience for Rock and Roll Love?

MT: Definitely teenage girls. Biker Girl was more for 7 to 10 or 11, but Rock and Roll Love is more for junior high or early high school. Detective Jermain is about American teenagers, so I made it a little bit older, maybe 15 to 17. I like to grow together with the readers.

BA: How are your comics different from manga?

MT: Usually manga is about a girl who is waiting for some special boy and they are going to make her happy, or she is living in her imagination—one girl and 10 really good looking boys surrounding her. I am living in America, and I have a lot of American girlfriends here, and obviously those American girls are not like Japanese girls at all. They are not shy, they have their own identity, they have power. I wanted more focus on girls here, and I wanted the readers to share the feeling with my characters.

I read American graphic novels. My favorite artist is Craig Thompson, who is a friend, and I like Charles Burns, who made Black Hole.

I don’t call myself a manga artist so much. My books are more like a teen graphic novel, like Minx. But I’m Japanese, so obviously I’m influenced [by manga].

BA: How did you dream up your characters and give them all personalities?

MT: I don’t want to put so many crazy characters together in a book—it would be too crazy and too busy. If the main characters are sort of negative or shy, I try to put in a sidekick that is more mature or adult and I try to encourage her.

For my new book, Detective Jermain, I visited an American high school in Madison, Wisconsin, and I talked to the teenagers there. I focused on girls who had a teenage attitude, some sort of ego problem. The sidekick boys, I though maybe if she is a really passionate girl, one boy is really shy and sort of a computer geek, and another boy I made a real heartbreaker, a popular boy. It is going to be a love triangle.

BA: Tell me about creating the Japanese character for Archie. Was it your idea or did they approach you?

MT: Janna [Morishima, of Diamond Comics Distributors] told them I was really good at writing stories, so they checked my website and books and they contacted me.

BA: How did you make her different from the other characters?

MT: Most Archie characters are cute and funny and positive, but I wanted to put in something different, someone who is shy and needs help, so that’s why I created a Japanese exchange student. When Kumi sees Betty or Veronica, she thinks they are teachers because they are so tall. In Archie they are really nice to people all the time, so they welcome her and try to make friends for her, do some activities together. I wanted to show some cultural exchange in the story, so Kumi and her whole family move to Riverdale from Tokyo and she is going to invite Archie people to her house, and her house has Japanese furniture. Her mother is going to bring them some weird Japanese snacks, so it is going to be interesting—the Archie characters never had that before.

BA: What is Detective Jermain about?

MT: It is about this American girl, Jermain, she is 17 years old, just about to graduate high school. She has parents who used to be world famous detectives, and her father died years ago. Now she is acting just like a detective, and she and her mother are always having fights. Volume 1 is not going to be about the mystery of her father’s death. She’s going to solve the mystery later, but in volume 1 I wanted so show off more of a school life story. So it’s going to be about Jermain [and her friends] Andy and Travis, and they are going to solve a school mystery.

It is about a girl who likes to think she is independent, but she is really not. She is a teenager, she has all these fights with her mom, a friendship that will turn into a romantic relationship. So it’s teen drama, plus this school mystery. Volume 1 is going to be up-down-up-down.

I am really enjoying drawing all these characters who wear really interesting fashions—obviously if they are teenage girls they are into fashion.

BA: Did you go to art school?

MT: No, not at all. I have a high school English teacher’s license in Japan. I can be a teacher over there.

BA: What is your family like?

MT: My brother is younger, he is such a typical Japanese boy, always inside the house, always doing something on the computer, always reading a manga, but he became a cop, so he’s a pretty, quiet serious cop. My mom wanted to become a comedian, but she took a test to become a police officer and she passed it, so she did become a cop. She’s more dealing with teenagers. And my father is a detective. Until last year, he was doing more drug [investigations].

Usually people imagine that Japanese parents are very conservative and they don’t want their kids to go away. Usually we live together until the daughter gets married, while Americans live together until the daughter graduates high school. In a typical Japanese family we don’t interrupt each other so much. My parents never say no to me. They never wanted to control me. They are more worried about my brother. When I said I wanted to move to America, they never said no to me. They trust me. I think that is why they let me do whatever I wanted to do.

BA: Are you making a living as a cartoonist?

MT: Yes. I am pretty lucky. I heard that becoming an artist in America is difficult, but I just make comics, and sometimes I teach.

BA: What do you like best about making comics?

MT: I really like when I am inking, that’s the best. I just feel like I am a cartoonist. Pencils are just flat, but when I put ink in with my brush, the characters look like they are moving and talking. And I usually use my friends as the models, so Jermain is my good friend from Madison, Wisconsin. Her name is also Jermain. To me, when I ink my character Jermain, my real friend Jermain is kind of in there.

I love teaching comics to kids. I teach at libraries in Manhattan; they hired me as a freelance teacher. It’s really fun and really good study for me. I think it is important for me to always be in contact with teenagers.

BA: Do you show your books to teenagers?

MT: Yes they read it. Showing my book, which was published, really inspires them, and they are going to be more motivated to create. And it’s fun to see some kids with portfolios. I can help them to make some different shapes or postures. It’s good also to know these days that kids like the old style, they like these stories. Of course the best thing is about teaching comics is I can hear their own stories, what they do every day at school, their relationships with their parents. I’m not a teenager any more but I feel like I’m still living in their world.

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