The Rafu Shimpo - L.A. Japanese Daily News

An Eye for Art
By AUDREY SHIOMI
Rafu Staff Writer
Saturday, July 15, 2006

"Optic Nerve" author Adrian Tomine introduces his favorite Japanese cartoonist to U.S. audiences.

Images: Courtesy of Drawn and Quarterly
A publicity shot of Adrian Tomine

Depression, awkwardness, angst—it’s what readers most identify with when reading Adrian Tomine’s somber comic book series "Optic Nerve." A fourth-generation Japanese American who spent childhood in perpetual relocation throughout California and for a brief time in Germany, Tomine has found solace drawing in solitude ever since he could remember. Doodling grew into comic-style storyboarding, and before he knew it he was disseminating self-published mini-comics to local comic shops.

Tomine’s big break came when an editor for the now-defunct Tower Records magazine Pulse! brought him aboard as a regular contributor. Then in 1995, when Tomine was a mere 21-year-old, comic book publisher Drawn & Quarterly inducted him into its cavalry of underground cartoonists.

Now 32, Tomine continues to work on his "Optic Nerve" series alongside occassional stints for weekly high-brow magazine The New Yorker.

By Yoshihiro Tatsumi, right, an excerpt of Tatsumi’s work, left

Next week, Tomine travels to California to promote the release of his latest project, “Abandon the Old in Tokyo,” an English-translated version of works by his Japanese comic artist hero Yoshihiro Tatsumi. On July 19, the two will appear for a Q&A session at The Hammer Museum in Westwood. The event is free and open to the public. Then from July 21-23, Tatsumi and Tomine travel to Comic-con in San Diego for signings and a panel discussion.

This week, Tomine spoke to Rafu, offering insight on his life as a comic book artist and why he enjoys Tatsumi’s work so much.

The cover of Tomine’s Optic Nerve #10, left, and Optic Nerve #9, right.

RS: So was it in Jr. High when you began drawing?

AT: Oh no, I was pretty deep into it at that point. I was doing things that were like comic books at a really early age, before I could even really read. I was trying to draw pictures in a series just to sort of tell a story. So I’ve definitely been working at it for a long time.

RS: You moved around a lot as a kid. I’m sure it was tough always being the new kid in school. Did that affect how you draw? Did that lead you into why you draw?

AT: Well, it’s hard to say which came first because I think I was already predisposed to having the kind of personality that would prefer to stay in and do stuff on my own rather than to go out and play with a bunch of the neighborhood kids. So even before I started moving around that much I was sort of headed down that path, but I’m sure that once I did start up at new schools it was certainly reinforced. So yeah it’s probably it’s a little of both.

The English edition of “The Pushman and other stories.

RS: Because I know you mentioned in the preface of “32 Stories” (a collection of Tomine’s early works as a teenager) you mentioned that if your high school experience had been more pleasant then this comic book wouldn’t have existed.

AT: Yeah, probably that’s true. It’s different once you get into high school because, given a choice, I probably would have wanted more of a social life than a budding comic book career.

RS: Oh yeah? So how was your high school experience? What made it so bad?

AT: Well let’s see. I mean, it was the whole circumstance. I moved back to Sacramento a few weeks before school started, so I really didn’t know anyone at the whole school.

I was literally walking onto that campus and knowing no one. Some of it is just sort of universal teenage doldrums. You know I think it was just a really good academic school. My parents chose this really good school for me that was like a college prep school. Like 90 percent of their graduates went on to universities and it was about as upper-crust and private as a public school could be.

I have friends who teach at Berkeley High now. I’ve gone there to talk and it’s such a different world. They have an art department, openly gay and lesbian staff and faculty and students are encouraged to be who they are ...

RS: Your high school was different.

AT: Yeah, I’d say it was the opposite of that.

RS: Would you say you’ve led a typical Japanese American upbringing? Did you go to obon festivals?

AT: Yeah, but I’d say I was on the low end of the involvement scale. I was vaguely involved with the Buddhist church once in a while. I don’t know what the typical experience is, but I guess there was some of that.

RS: Looking at some of the fan mail published in "Optic Nerve," I’ve noticed you have some readers from Japan. Have you ever been there?

AT: Yes, in 2003. It was to promote a Japanese translation of my work, and also to get the ball rolling with this translation project with [Yoshihiro] Tatsumi.

RS: He’s been a big influence in your career. When did you first discover him?

AT: There was an unauthorized release of his work that came out here in the late ‘80s and that’s when I first found it. Probably when I was first starting high school at 15 or something like that.

RS: What was it about his art that you took to?

AT: Well, at that period in my life, the timing was really fortuitous because I’d grown up reading comic books all my life. When I was around 13, 14, I started feeling like I was outgrowing comics. I’d go to the comic shop every week and buy the same stupid superhero thing, and not even reading them, just sort of filing them away. Fortunately, it happened to be a really exciting time for underground comics. So I was able to discover that whole world, primarily “Love & Rockets” by the Hernandez brothers. So that was a real eye-opener for me—to see that you could take the visual language of comic books but tell very adult and personal stories. So when I found Tatsumi’s work not long after that, it was sort of a similar revelation. I’d been aware of Japanese comics my whole life, and just because of my background, people including family members always assumed I’d have an interest in manga. But I never really took to it. The stuff that got translated into English was a lot of ninja, samurai stuff. A lot of robots. To me it was, yeah, I mean it probably was a little more sophisticated but it was still similar to the American mainstream work that I was losing interest in. So to find this work by Tatsumi was sort of analogous to discovering “Love & Rockets.” It wasn’t the Japanese-style manga that wasn’t interesting me, it was the content. So it was a real inspiration to me.

RS: But right now there’s an explosion of manga in the U.S. So many things are being translated.

AT: Yeah, but it’s still, for the most part, not to my taste. That’s the funny thing. There’s certainly a wider range, but the range includes everything except for what I’m interested in … but to find something like the work Tatsumi does is still pretty rare.

RS: Or maybe it’s just stuff that hasn’t been translated into English?

AT: Yeah, well that’s the thing. People like me who can’t read Japanese are judging a whole art form from a tiny keyhole. It’s like if the three most popular American movies made it over to Japan, then they’d say American cinema sucks.

RS: So when you were in Japan, did you realize you and Tatsumi had similar personalities?

AT: Yeah it was kind of like an “It’s a Small World” experience because here’s the guy who’s so much older than me and we’ve had such different lives. We’d never before set foot on each other’s soil, and yet within minutes of us meeting, with an interpreter, we were speaking very fluidly, acting friendly and finding a lot of common ground. The thing that blew my mind was that he seemed just as enthusiastic and curious about me and I sort of expected this would be my audience with the great man and sort of interview him, but it was much more of a conversation.

RS: So I assume he was well aware of your work?

AT: Well not wellaware because I don’t know if he reads English and my work had only been translated into Japanese right at that time. But he had read the Japanese translation.

RS: In "Optic Nerve" #9, the story opens up with couple leaving a bad Asian American film. The guy starts venting about how Asian Americans artists always feel the need to infuse some sort of cultural lesson in their work. So what sort of advice would you have for aspiring Asian American artists?

AT: Well, I don’t know if I have any advice.

RS: How about criticism?

AT: Well, that’s not me for one thing, so you shouldn’t assume that anything that comes out of that character’s mouth is my own view. In many regards, that character is much more vehement than I am, and so I guess I don’t have any criticism or any admonition or anything like that for people who are trying to do art. The only position I can take on that is just what I feel I want to do personally or what I enjoy consuming. And in general I don’t think I’ve ever been interested in art that’s political with a capital “P.” That relates to what I do with my work as well as what I like to read or see in movies or listen to music. I certainly have no criticism for people with political causes or issues they would like to vent or social changes they would like to see happen. But just on a personal level, I’d prefer to see that divorced from art, which is a pretty unpopular stance to take. But it’s not so much a stance as it is personal taste.

RS: Reading your works, I get this idea that it’s a documentation of your life.

AT: I’d be reticent to make that description. I think I’m courting that misinterpretation with this story because I’ve sort of thrown in a few fake clues that would make people think it was completely an autobiographical story—setting it in Berkeley, making the character sort of look like me—there’s a few things like that that I threw in there for some perverse reason but I would say this is actually the most strictly fictional writing that I’ve done in terms of trying to create characters and invent plot lines.

RS: So what’s your next project?

AT: Issue 9 of "Optic Nerve" is the first chapter of a three-part story. And I’m now working on the third chapter. That’s the main thing that’s taking my time and I’m looking forward to getting that done, and next year publishing it as one big book. The second Tatsumi book debuts next week. It’s called “Abandon the Old in Tokyo.” And that’s about it for now. I sometimes do illustration work on the side but I’ve been trying to turn that work down and get this book done. There’s a CD for an event called “Luna” that I did some artwork for. I do stuff for the New Yorker but that’s about it.

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