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Optic Nerve #14
Optic Nerve #14
"Optic Nerve 14 brings Adrian Tomine’s multifaceted, expressive cartooning to a new peak with two stories and a bonus autobiographical strip. “Killing and Dying” is about a father’s struggles to be supportive: it centers on parenthood, mortality, and stand-up comedy. “Intruders” depicts a man obsessively trying to find his way back to a former life by revisiting places he once knew."--Drawn & Quarterly.
40 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2015
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About the author
Adrian Tomine
43 books1,163 followersAdrian Tomine was born in 1974 in Sacramento, California. He began self-publishing his comic book series Optic Nerve. His comics have been anthologized in publications such as McSweeney’s, Best American Comics, and Best American Nonrequired Reading, and his graphic novel "Shortcomings" was a New York Times Notable Book of 2007. His next release, "Killing and Dying" will be published by Drawn and Quarterly in October 2015.
Since 1999, Tomine has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughters.
Since 1999, Tomine has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughters.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 24, 2019
WOW! La primer historia es zarpada a otro level. El nivel de sutileza y construcción de personajes tridimensionales y verosímiles es muy alta, y los dibujos y los planos encajan perfecto. Esto realmente es slice-of-life, porque no hay nada intrínsicamente "interesante" en lo que pasa, es simplemente un momento en la vida; pero hay que tener el talento de Tomine para hacer que eso sea, justamente, interesante. La segunda no es tan increíble, pero de todos modos me re enganché.
February 11, 2016
Tomine has always crafted Optic Nerve with an increasing subtlety and ambiguity, but with the two stories in his latest issue, this literary distance may have put me off. Nevertheless, it's an interesting read as he continues the experimentation from the last few issues while preserving his strengths.
The first tale, "Killing and Dying," is a quiet portrait of a family whose awkward stuttering teenager wants to try her hand at comedy with the father mortified at the prospect of this. The quiet scenes play out on an astounding twenty-panel grid, and are carefully drawn in both senses of the word. You quickly get a sense of each person as a member of a family that's both prickly and quite loving. The father can be a total dick to his daughter, but it comes from the perhaps misguided urge to protect her. The end left me a bit cold, though. It's abrupt, with a feeling of incompleteness not uncommon to the modern prose literary story, but it's quite deliberate; even the grid on the final page--strenuously kept to for pages--remains incomplete.
The second story, "Intruder," is a bit more successful. It's another shift of storytelling, with a tight first-person focus and narration. Here, a soldier tries to come to terms with the pieces of his life, with a combination of the usual Tomine quiet moments and bits of sudden violence. The end, again, is ambiguous. I read the few climactic panels again and again, and I'm still not sure what occurred. Were Tomine not a crystal-clear storyteller, one could read this as a flaw instead of a carefully considered choice.
As usual, the more I think about this issue of Optic Nerve, the more I like it (this was a three-star review when I began writing it). In spite of its flaws, I'm always glad to read this comic.
The first tale, "Killing and Dying," is a quiet portrait of a family whose awkward stuttering teenager wants to try her hand at comedy with the father mortified at the prospect of this. The quiet scenes play out on an astounding twenty-panel grid, and are carefully drawn in both senses of the word. You quickly get a sense of each person as a member of a family that's both prickly and quite loving. The father can be a total dick to his daughter, but it comes from the perhaps misguided urge to protect her. The end left me a bit cold, though. It's abrupt, with a feeling of incompleteness not uncommon to the modern prose literary story, but it's quite deliberate; even the grid on the final page--strenuously kept to for pages--remains incomplete.
The second story, "Intruder," is a bit more successful. It's another shift of storytelling, with a tight first-person focus and narration. Here, a soldier tries to come to terms with the pieces of his life, with a combination of the usual Tomine quiet moments and bits of sudden violence. The end, again, is ambiguous. I read the few climactic panels again and again, and I'm still not sure what occurred. Were Tomine not a crystal-clear storyteller, one could read this as a flaw instead of a carefully considered choice.
As usual, the more I think about this issue of Optic Nerve, the more I like it (this was a three-star review when I began writing it). In spite of its flaws, I'm always glad to read this comic.
August 5, 2015
An excellent installment in the ON series. Contents: KILLING AND DYING, the full-color lead story about the middle-aged father of an awkward teenage girl who tries stand-up comedy; INTRUDERS, a black-and-white short about a returning army veteran who accidentally gets the keys to his old apartment; a letters page; and, on the inside cover, a hilarious autobiographical strip following Tomine's ongoing stubbornness around social media.
The dad in the lead story is reminiscent of the father from DYLAN AND DONOVAN, an older Tomine short story.
There is a hint of world-building when we see a character in the second short wearing an Owls hat.
Thanks to Tomine's quality writing chops, small panels, and cartooning skills, this 40-page comic book is well worth the asking price and provides a satisfying reading experience.
Shortly, he will release his next collected volume, which will include the stories from the last few volumes of Optic Nerve but probably omit the hugely entertaining letters and autobiographical features, both of which make the "floppies" an enjoyable read, so I recommend collecting the individual issues.
The dad in the lead story is reminiscent of the father from DYLAN AND DONOVAN, an older Tomine short story.
There is a hint of world-building when we see a character in the second short wearing an Owls hat.
Thanks to Tomine's quality writing chops, small panels, and cartooning skills, this 40-page comic book is well worth the asking price and provides a satisfying reading experience.
Shortly, he will release his next collected volume, which will include the stories from the last few volumes of Optic Nerve but probably omit the hugely entertaining letters and autobiographical features, both of which make the "floppies" an enjoyable read, so I recommend collecting the individual issues.
June 2, 2015
Why is Optic Nerve so depressing these days? It's getting a bit boring. This issue has the awkward cringe-worthy social situations and general air of alienation/unspoken grievances/sadness/unhappiness that I've come to expect, but come on Tomine lighten up. A little humor would be much appreciated. Or at least, switch focus for a minute. Write that comic about Mongolian yak herders that I long for.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews