Books

Adrian Tomine: Summer Blonde - Four Stories

By Leroy Douresseaux
November 9, 2003 - 10:11

A college drama instructor once told me that real life was boring and that if I wanted to tell stories about what was going on in the streets, I should "take it to the streets." Real life isn't boring. The harsh reality is that there are only a few of storytellers who've ever been able to take the part of "real life" that is the ordinary, the mundane, and the everyday and make it riveting, engaging drama.

One of those special people is Adrian Tomine, and in 1991, Canadian publisher Drawn & Quarterly unleashed Tomine's stunning comic book OPTIC NERVE upon the unsuspecting and not too interested direct market. Maybe too many people were busy watching Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane's crotches.

SUMMER BLONDE is the second Optic Nerve book collection (gathering issues 5-8). Rave reviews from the faux literary rags litter Blonde's back cover. It would be somewhat incorrect to say that the quoted reviewers don't really get Adrian's work and bit self-inflated for me to say that I do. However, I think Tomine's work is more than just about "loneliness and disconnection."

Like the great storytellers, Tomine understands how romantic a good story is, and a story can be good even if it's about ordinary, every day, and run-of-mill people; good characters don't have to have glamorous lives. In "Hawaiian Getaway," Hilary Chan is just as crazy and neurotic as Lady Macbeth. One's an unemployed girl perpetually mired in unhappiness and looking for something more but she doesn't quite know what. The latter is browbeating noblewoman perpetually mired in unhappiness and looking for something but she doesn't quite know what.

Tomine, as a cartoonist, isn't about minimalism, as some have suggested. He simply knows that every panel should be important to the story. If any one panel on any page turns out to be extraneous, the whole page is just a pretty picture. We know people like his characters in our own lives, and they might indeed bore us. But ever a romantic at heart, Tomine uses each panel to show us the important parts - the stuff that makes characters like a failed writer and a lonely stalker both tragic and engaging characters. This is the efficiency of a good storyteller who knows how to make us care about any and all of his characters.

When Tomine gives us ordinary people as characters, he shows us the good parts that are hidden behind the curtain. It's those scenes and only those scenes in the story of a life that keeps us riveted. Adrian Tomine is a fantastic storyteller - the heir to Jaime Hernandez in delineating the shaky lives of the under 40 set. His writing is as good as the best prose writers, and his understanding of how to tell stories in the medium of comic books makes him a great cartoonist.

Rating: A+ /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12