Adrian Tomine

Adrian Tomine is the author of Scenes from an Impending Marriage, Shortcomings, Summer Blonde, Sleepwalk, 32 Stories, and the comic book series Optic Nerve. He is also an illustrator for The New Yorker, Esquire, and Rolling Stone, and his stories have appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading and An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories. What happens when a childhood hobby grows into a lifelong career? The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist (Drawn and Quarterly) Adrian Tomine’s funniest and most revealing foray into autobiography, offers many unexpected answers. When a sudden medical incident lands Tomine in the emergency room, he begins to question if it was really all worthwhile: despite the accolades and opportunities of a seemingly charmed career, it’s the gaffes, humiliations, slights, and insults he’s experienced (or caused) within the industry that loom largest in his memory. But in between chaotic book tours, disastrous interviews, and cringe-inducing interactions with other artists, life happens: he fumbles his way into marriage, parenthood, and an indisputably fulfilling existence. A richer emotional story emerges as his memories are delineated in excruciatingly hilarious detail. Ed Park, in the New York Times Book Review marvels at how “Adrian Tomine has gone from “the boy wonder of mini-comics” (per Daniel Clowes) to master of the form… The 26 vignettes here trace a lifetime of neuroses and humiliations [with] artful minimalism.”