28 October 2007

Optic Nerve #9 by Adrian Tomine

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Ok, so I hadn't read Tomine's long running Optic Nerve before, only the Sleepwalk album that I got from J after we'd just met. I couldn't read more than one story at a time of that one as it kind of made me depressed - Tomine has this fantastic way of writing and drawing the emptiness in our lives, the moments in between, where we can do nothing but suck up to the hopelessness of the World. He's a genius.

Optic Nerve #9 (published by Drawn & Quarterly) is this little comic book magazine on real nice paper with a beautiful cover that contains the beginning of a longer story. It's about this guy who works at a movie theatre and whose relationship seems to be coming to an end because of... Yeah, what? That kind of mud most couples seem to sink into after a while if they don't watch themselves. You know, the gooey stuff growing inside your stomach that makes you throw crap over your partner just because it's easier than taking care of your own. All that plus some good old non-talking can break anything, it seems.

The main character in this story is Asian American, as well as his girlfriend and his best friend. I laughed hard at a lot of their discussions and doings. Not many second generation Asian people in the comics I usually come across...

However. Reading Adrian Tomine's work makes me want to both die and draw. This is a very good thing.

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