Review
OPTIC NERVE NO. 9
By Adrian Tomine
Drawn and Quarterly, 32 pp.
Review
SCRAPBOOK
UNCOLLECTED WORK: 1990 — 2004
by Adrian Tomine
Drawn and Quarterly, 208 pp.
It isn’t often that the alternative comix world actually generates some hype, and even more rarely is that hype for a hot, young new creator.
That, however, is the place Adrian Tomine has found himself in the past few years. The twentysomething Californian’s short stories, found in the pages of his comic-book series Optic Nerve and collections such as Summer Blonde, have been heralded as a strong new comix voice and an accessible alternative to his more weirdo precursors.
Upon the release of Optic Nerve No. 9 and Scrapbook: 1990-2004, a compilation of Tomine’s uncollected work, however, those sage words from wizened Chuck D come to mind: don’t believe the hype.
Tomine’s work is characterized by an open-ended storytelling style that is often praised for its conscious ambiguity, but strikes me as apprehensive. He seems afraid to make crucial storytelling decisions, and he almost always leaves me feeling shortchanged.
This isn’t a new criticism – Tomine often parodies such criticisms himself – but Optic Nerve No. 9 continues another problem of Tomine’s: his characters. All too often they are self-obsessed twentysomethings with relationship woes – it’s The O.C. of the comix world – and there isn’t a subject in the world less in need of another medium. Good-looking, shoe-gazing young urbanites aren’t inherently uninteresting, but when you’re examining the same life problems as entire genres of film, television and music, there simply needs to be more depth and ingenuity than Tomine offers.
His artwork is certainly beautiful in a photo-realistic kind of way (I’ll take a pixie Tomine girl over Summer Roberts any day), but true comix geniuses create a completely unique world with their artwork, giving soul to even everyday objects, whereas Tomine’s feel sterile. An empty room rendered by R. Crumb, for example, tells its own story. Tomine’s is just a space without furniture.
For its part, Scrapbook is a largely eye-pleasing look at Tomine’s early strips and commissioned work, but it’s like a rarities and B-sides album: important only to fans. If you want to read a comix artist’s scrapbook with true meaning and palatable humanism, check out David Collier’s 2002 Hamilton Scrapbook.
The latest instalment of Optic Nerve sees Tomine experimenting with a longer-form story. He’s certainly no slouch in creating engaging characters, but for Tomine to truly succeed as a comix artist, he must offer some real insight into modern society and the difficulty of trying to fit into a world full of ambiguity – which is completely different than using it as a dramatic device. I’m not holding my breath for its conclusion, but, hell, it beats watching reruns of The O.C.
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