Must be like looking at a yearbook photo, right? In a cheeky turn, he’s put his own yearbook photo - awkward smile and all - on the front of the introduction with a story about how another cartoonist put it on the Web against his wishes. Tomine’s original introduction from 1995 is included with its fantastic opening sentence: “The book you hold in your hands would not exist had high school been a pleasant experience for me.”Ī new short introduction written more recently finds Tomine still a little uneasy about putting this early work out for consumption. Though they’d been collected in a single book edition, this slip-cased set breaks them back up into seven separately bound volumes complete with price tags and original reader letters. Tomine is also daring enough to create characters like protagonist Ben Takaka, who are more relatable than likable.Įven more intriguing is a new edition of 32 Stories, Tomine’s previously anthologized Optic Nerve mini-comics, which he began inking as a teen. What could’ve been a simple event (just a breakup, really) ends up being a sullen musing on race, region and inadequacy. The most recent case in point is the excellent Shortcomings, new in paperback.
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