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Adrian
Tomine is a master of the understated. His neat, precise lines
and the quiet expressions on his characters' faces mask their
tumultuous emotions. Shortcomings, collected from Tomine's
Optic Nerve comic, heralds the first time Tomine, a
fourth-generation Asian-American, has written about race.
But while the main characters in Shortcomings are Asian-Americans,
Americans of all ethnicities will be able to relate to this
tale of a couple and their friends struggling with their identities,
their parents' desires to control their lives, and the balancing
act required to manage relationships as they progress into
adulthood.
Ben Tanaka,
like many of Tomine's other characters, is an artsy west-coast
hipster. Ben's sarcasm sometimes borders on cruelty, especially
when he's talking to his smart, beautiful girlfriend, Miko
Hayashi. He thinks the Asian-American film festival she just
helped organize is crap ("Everyone knows it's garbage, but
they clap for it anyway because it was made by some Chinese
girl from Oakland."), and he can't even muster up any tenderness
when Miko leaves for New York City to start an internship.
Instead, Tanaka uses Miko's absence as an excuse to pursue
the blonde women he desires. When Miko stops returning Ben's
phone calls, Ben takes off for New York, staying with Alice,
a friend from Berkeley who has just moved in with her new
girlfriend.
Shortcomings
shows off how much Tomine has matured as both an artist and
a storyteller. The characters are much more complete and humanized,
and his lines even more confident. He can convey a change
in emotion via a minor variation in facial expression. Where
his style used to seem derivative of artists like Dan Clowes
and Jaime Hernandez, Tomine has stripped away much of their
over-the-top cartooniness. What remains is as stark and raw
as a Ingmar Bergman film. Also like Bergman, Tomine is not
afraid to mix drama and humor, and some of the book's best
moments come from comic outbursts that occur during highly
confrontational incidents. And, unlike previous collections,
Shortcomings is one long story, allowing Tomine the
time to allow the story to unfold naturally, avoiding the
abrupt endings present in some of the Summer Blonde
stories.
As in
many of Tomine's earlier stories, we are not seeing the main
characters at their best, but they are liked in spite of themselves.
Ben's comments on Miko's new life in New York are hilarious
and mean. Miko's coolness toward Ben after he finds her in
New York is tragic but completely understandable. And, despite
the serious subject, the book has many laugh-out-loud moments,
like when Ben goes to the apartment of a girl he has a crush
on and discovers her highly unusual art.
What
plagues Ben's and Miko's relationship is how even the most
personal thing one can imagine—such as determining with
whom one falls in love—can be interpreted as a political
act. Ben and Miko struggle with the fact that they may be
dating merely to please their parents and their Asian-American
community. Miko contends that Ben's attraction to blondes
is a rebellious act. Ben, Miko, and Ben's friend Alice slowly
understand that everything they do is interpreted by others
through a lens of ethnicity. Is it possible to get out from
under this microscope? Tomine doesn't attempt to address the
issues he raises, instead allowing his characters deal with
the fallout of their realizations. Ultimately, in this harsh
tale of a couple struggling with identity, Tomine lets the
reader decide if anyone is right or wrong.
(October,
2007)
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