Yet while Kubrick or Lynch deal mostly in gruesome violence, Tomine’s specialty is gruesome awkwardness. Killing and Dying, released Fall 2015, is his fifth Optic Nerve collection, his first in almost ten years, since Shortcomings in 2007. Now hailed as a master of the genre, his messed-up characters have grown along with him, from teendom to middle age. Tomine has been producing these paeans to life’s most uncomfortable moments since he was 16, when he began his series Optic Nerve. Think Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch-whom Tomine cites as two of his main influences-translated into weird, enveloping, and often disturbing graphic narrative vignettes. So, while most brand new parents are thrilled to collapse into their own beds when they first return home from the hospital, Tomine instead stayed up to watch some art films-a series so bleak that they made even his “Vulture” interviewer shudder a bit.Īs you might guess from the title of his newest collection, “Killing and Dying,” Tomine has managed to retain a fairly unflinching view of the world-and yes, as you also might guess, these storylines are definitely for adults. The graphic novelist and artist known for his royally flawed characters and dark storylines was especially worried about becoming a new parent-he was afraid he’d become a softie. I’m posting it now because “Killing and Dying” just came out in paperback, AND because Tomine is an important precursor to Nick Drnaso, whose “Sabrina” I’ll be reviewing in September.Īdrian Tomine doesn’t want to lose his edge. This review was originally written for the “Elkhart Truth” in spring of 2016, just before they discontinued their community blogs. You can find all of the books I review at the store.

in Goshen, for providing me with books to review.

Shortcomings adrian tomine summary