“The whole issue of ethnic identity, that wasn't like a burning issue to get on a soapbox and pontificate about. I think the expectations of that annoyed me in a way and made me realize how annoying it is for any artist who belongs to any minority group, whatever it was, left-handed or being bald -- that there are people who expect them to solely use that to sing the praises of their group.”

~ Adrian Tomine

By Catzie Vilayphonh  |  Send to Friend

It's hard to stay within boxes, even if drawing boxes are the very thing that define you. Adrian Tomine has been drawing them his entire life, sketching real-life experiences into comic strips. Thanks to a nosy, supportive older brother and a cult fan following, what started as sketches eventually became a series. Rather than indulging in the usual, his comics are based on real people with real, weird issues. They read like short-stories, mostly dark and humorous, and range from his personal paranoia and phobia of food allergies, to girls with insomnia and episodes with friends pretending to fake-inspire an incident just to get made into one of Tomine's comics.

His latest effort is a full-fledged fictional book called "Shortcomings," complete with chapters, main characters, and even a little bit of racial politics. What makes this interesting is the use of dialogue, which holds the weight of the story but also scenes that contain no words, perfectly depicting those somber moments we all must face wordlessly. This addition makes Adrian not only a comic book artist and illustrator but a graphic novelist, as in a writer who writes with pictures. But don't get so caught up in these marketing terms, Adrian still believes he's still just a cartoonist at heart. Only this time around, his characters have some serious issues.

Catzie: So you are a cartoonist, and just to clarify, you're not just drawing sci-fi fantasy superhero with superpowers. Your comics have been based on your life and the things around it?

Adrian: Yes, so far its been free of the genre trappings that people usually associate with [comics]. I mean its somewhat inspired by real life, it started out autobiographical and then as time went on it started becoming fictional. My work uses the language of comics as a medium for telling stories rather than as a genre, which is how people used to think of it.

C: So now you've published books that are also short stories. Would you consider yourself a writer?

A: No. I think you were right by saying that I was a cartoonist.

C: Even though it's heavier on the dialogue than your previous work? You still think of it as comics, not so much literature?

A: Oh yeah. I think you could make the case for some comics falling under literature but I don't think they are mutually exclusive. I don't think you have to pick one or the other.

C: Would you say that you were a graphic novelist?

A: No.

C: Just for people who may be unfamiliar with all this, what is your definition of a graphic novelist?

A: Terminology is not that important to me. If a journalist or reviewer needs to in that way or refer to me as a graphic novelist, because it makes sense to some people, then that's okay with me. You know, it's not my term, I didn't come up with it so I'm not going to define it.

C: That's fair. What about the term "comix"?

A: That is an older term that bout in the 1960s to identify more underground comics from mainstream comics, sort of similar marketing thing as "graphic novelist" to sort of say "This is not "Spiderman" or "Archie."

C: I read somewhere most of your earlier work doesn't really deal with racial issues, and that when you drew yourself, your glasses were opaque -- we couldn't really see your eyes. But your new book centers around three Asian Americans and the political-racial stuff is very direct and overt.

A: There's a lot I could say about that. First of all, me drawing myself with opaque glasses, I don't think pertains to this issue at all. It's a tradition in cartooning that goes back decades. It was something I picked up from Peanuts -- Charles Schultz drew Marcy in that way and that was the very first comic book I had read. For some reason that issue keeps coming up as a reccurring theme as though that was some attempt to hide my own identity --which it wasn't -- and also that someone's eyes [are] the only feature to identity one's ethnicity, that also seems a little short-sighted. Maybe there are some people who thought that theory would fly better because my name isn't so clearly Japanese. But of course I didn't pick my name. There was a never any attempt to hide who I was. I didn't hide out from the public, I went to all the comic conventions and did interviews in person.

In terms of the actual subject matter -- that wasn't why I got into comics. There were some people who had the expectations, almost an assumption that maybe I became a cartoonist as a means to address those things but for some reason was stifling those opinions and thoughts -- which wasn't the case. With the nature of my upbringing and the cities I grew up in, the whole issue of ethnic identity, that wasn't like a burning issue to get on a soapbox and pontificate about. I think the expectations of that annoyed me in a way and made me realize how annoying it is for any artist who belongs to any minority group, whatever it was, left-handed or being bald -- that there are people who expect them to solely use that to sing the praises of their group. A lot of this first came up fifteen years ago, when I was just starting, but it was really important to me to make a name for myself on the merit of the work itself and not "Oh he's the Asian American artist - he's so-so but he's Asian American."

The change has just been that, as much as I was resistant to these suggestions early on, it set up a challenge that had been slowly working up in the back of my mind. How could I take the challenge and address those issues but do it in a way that I felt comfortable and consistent with the way I was [working]. I didn't want it to be a compete break from my style. And so, over the years, I had been filing away ideas that I thought would fit in that category and that was the starting point.

C: When my editor gave me this book he said that I would really like it, and I wonder if he said that because I was Asian American. After I had read it, I felt that because I was Asian American, I could relate to the characters, -- I got all the "rice king" jokes and the whole dating-a-white-person-equals-betrayal thing, Koreans-hating-Japanese-inside-jokes, I got all that -- but that whole scenario was overdue. But then I thought about your fans who had been with you since the beginning, and thought maybe it was your way of bringing something new to them.

A: For the most part, I don't think the newer subject matter would put off a pre-existing reader of my work. In general, especially in mainstream media, there's this expectation, this struggle for universality, where they think that if the character has any ethnic background or is slightly unusual that that's gonna off put anybody who isn't exactly like that. I think its very much the opposite, that people are interested in learning things that are different form themselves, and if it's paired with human experience and emotion then that's enough to pull them through. I recently read this novel by Junot Diaz, called "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." It's very specific in its reference to subculture stuff like nerdy-boy-sci-fi stuff, very Dominican-Republic-ethnic-culture, back-in-homeland-and-New-Jersey, and there's a lot of dialogue written in Spanish. I picked up the nerdy stuff very easily, the Spanish I didn't understand -- but it didn't matter -- I could still understand what was going on. If someone else happens to know who the Fantastic Four were and could speak Spanish then it was an additional quality that adds to the whole picture.

C: My favorite story is the girl who writes a break-up letter to her boyfriend about how shitty he treats her, mails it and right afterwards regrets it so she goes to the post office to see if she can get it back, but she cant and she's so distraught she throws a match into the mailbox and goes to visit her boyfriend only to be met at his intercom telling her to go away and then having to walk by the burning mailbox. Do you always write so humorously about dark stuff?

A: It's sort of ingrained in my personality. I guess from growing up on the fringes, not ever feeling part of the in-crowd, especially at the depths of your teenage angst, you have to see the black humor in it all otherwise you sink too far. That sort of the thing that keeps you alive in a way.

C: Do you ever draw happy people?

A: Sure.

C: Happy from beginning to end?

A: I don't know anybody like that and since I draw from my experience...

C: What is "My Porno Doppleganger"?

A: [Laughs] It's a short story, it's going to be in an anthology thats due to come out next year called "Kramer's Ergot." It's supposed to be the source for the most avant garde cartoonists and illustrations but they're doing this special issue that's going to be the size of a coffee table and they're trying to get a wide range of contributors to work in that format and in full color. After working in this prescribed method with "Shortcomings" for five years, it was exactly the challenge I wanted to do, something contained that I could start and finish.

C: You've done illustration work for the "New Yorker." How did that happen?

A: I had already been working as an illustrator, more by circumstance then by choice, but there was a part of me that wanted to do work for the "New Yorker," it was a sort of a Mount Everest for cartoonists and illustrators. That was the only commercial job that I had actively pursued. It happened while I was still living in California -- I was visiting some friends in New York and while I was there, put together a portfolio of my samples, looked up the address to the New Yorker and dropped it off with the receptionist. A couple weeks later I got a call, did my first assignment and have been working with them since.

C: So you're a Cali boy living in New York?

A: It's not too dramatic a change, I figured out if someone from the Bay Area would move to New York that Brooklyn would be the smoothest transition. It still has the same feeling of being in the big metropolitan area, but you're not trapped in it. You can go back to your nice quiet neighborhood and walk to everything you need within your three block radius. I grew up with this mythologized feel of the city just from reading comics and movies that I had digested. It was always a place that had appeal to me. It's been four years and is still very exciting.

Shortcomings is fresh on the bookstands everywhere, and if you're still not familiar with Adrian Tomine's work I strongly suggest checking out 32 Stories: The Complete Optic Nerve Mini-Series, sorta like a "Best Of" compilation.

Next Week: Tamara Jenkins, Philly-native filmmaker and screenwriter talks about her newest movie, The Savages, and what she's been doing since The Slums of Beverly Hills.