WTOP Report Provokes Anger Among Area Cyclists
Deer Dies After Lion Attack Inside National Zoo
Goodbye Fixie, Hello Tweed!
'Trun' on to the 15th Street Contraflow Bike Lane
Adrian Tomine is not the same person as Ben Tanaka, the main character in his graphic novel, Shortcomings, so please don't get all angry at him. Just because they're both nebbishy, early 30s Japanese-American guys who are a little obsessed with their dealings with the opposite sex, doesn't mean Tomine is anywhere near as cynical, uptight and petulant as Tanaka -- at least as far as we can tell. The similarities between the two men have indeed led to some confusion for Tomine's fans and critics, largely in the form of the author being accused of being a self-hating Asian. The problem, you see, is that Tanaka has a bit of a fetish for white chicks, and his Japanese girlfriend, Miko, can't help but feel hurt when she notices his predilection.
Shortcomings is Tomine's first long-form graphic novel, collected from three recent installments of his popular comic, Optic Nerve, which he started when he was still in high school. Not dissimilar from the style of Daniel Clowes, Tomine deals in personal relationships, realistic, witty dialog, and presents his simple stories in bold, clean and naturalistic illustrations. His work also regularly appears in The New Yorker.
Tomine took a few minutes to answer some of DCist's questions about what it's like to be out touring with a graphic novel, and how he approaches his work. He's appearing tonight at Politics and Prose at 7 p.m.
How do you go about doing an in-store reading for a graphic novel? Do you actually read aloud, or do you show panels in a slideshow, or ... ?
The whole concept of doing a "reading" in support of a comic is, I think, generally a bad idea, at least for someone like me. It ends up feeling like children's story time at the library or something, with the cartoonist verbally describing what's going on in each panel and then doing awkward, nervous recitations of the dialogue. As someone who's been in the audience of events like that, I know it can be a bit cringe-inducing. So in lieu of that, I've put together a little slide show that's more about the process of creating the comic, and then I take questions from the audience. I can't guarantee that this alternative will be any less cringe-inducing, but the odds seem to be a bit better.
And what's it like touring traditional bookstores with a graphic novel? Do you mostly just get fans who show up, or do you run across people who don't know what to make of you?
I'm enjoying it. I think it's a good time for that. I feel like if I do a signing at a comic book store, the reaction tends to be, "Oh, it's that guy again." But comics or "graphic novels" seem to have some cachet or novelty value in regular book stores, so that probably works in my favor for the time being. It's really nice when someone shows up with a tattered, dog-eared edition of one of my old books...that's always kind of amazing to me, and it makes me feel a little old, too. But it's also very gratifying to meet someone who perhaps never read comics before in their life, and they're deciding to give it a try.
The story of Shortcomings appeared first across several Optic Nerve issues. Did you always intend to collect this particular storyline into a larger, single volume? Did you see and plan the overall story arc ahead of time?
Yes and yes. I spent a lot of time planning the whole thing out before I ever started drawing any of the pages, and I always envisioned it as a book. I'd like to be able to work a little more freely and improvisationally in the future, but for this one, I really worked it all out in advance.
How do you approach writing dialog? Do you write it all in advance or do you fill out the images as they come along?
I planned out the basic plot in advance--which sounds funny saying since it's a pretty minimal, simple plot--but the dialog was written concurrently with the images. Instead of writing out a script and then illustrating it, I "wrote" this book in comics form. In other words, I sketched out rough versions of each page, figuring out both the images and the dialogue simultaneously, which I think allowed the two elements to play of each other in ways that might not have occured otherwise.
Shortcomings reads remarkably like storyboards for a film -- and several of the characters are sort of wanna be filmmakers. Do you have any plans or desire to ever turn any of your stories into films, perhaps in the vein of Persepolis?
I'm not opposed to the idea of adapting stories to film, but it was never the goal I had in mind while drawing the comics. I can envision a way that it could be done well, but I can also envision a million ways it could be done poorly. In recent years, there's been a significant shift in American culture in terms of how comics are regarded, and I'm happy about that and I think I've certainly benefitted from it. But it is a little depressing that, for a lot of people, a big factor in this is the fact that some comics have been adapted into reasonably successful movies. It's almost like a film adaptation legitimizes the comic.
Do people assume that Ben Tanaka is basically you? Does that irritate you, or do you expect that sort of reaction at this point? I can imagine that if fans DO think Ben is a proxy for you, they might be a little irritated with some of the views they think you're expressing in this book.
Yeah, that's come up a lot more frequently than I expected, which probably shows how deluded I was when I created that character. There've been quite a few reviews of the book that are generally positive, but also very critical of Ben. A lot of them even come right out and say "Ben Tanaka is a prick." But I think on some subconscious level, I was probably encouraging that sort of reaction and almost daring readers to confuse me with the fictional character, and as a result, dislike us both. I think some of my work in the past was too narcissistic, too focused on trying to make some hypothetical reader feel warmly towards me as a person, and that can really be a dead end in terms of story ideas or subject matter.
What are you working on now?
An illustration for The New Yorker, a new comics story, and a bunch of interviews like this. And taxes.
Adrian Tomine appears tonight at Politics and Prose at 7 p.m.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Recent Comments