Nevertheless, Tomine is quick to assert that the story is 'wholly fictional.' 'Inasmuch as any story can be, anyway,' he says. '), all characteristics of his creator as well. The nisei protagonist of 'Shortcomings,' Ben Tanaka, is bespectacled, misanthropic and allergic to just about everything ('peanuts, walnuts. 'Shortcomings' is a milestone for Tomine in two ways: It's his first book-length story and the first in which he deals squarely and personally with the concept of Asian American identity. Perhaps it isn't a stretch to compare the two, but their latest works do more to illustrate their contrasts than their commonalities. Kim is equally comfortable in the realm of the uncomfortable his best stories illuminate the emotional bear traps and intricate dishonesties of our everyday interactions with a deadpan clarity that should be more painful than it is.īoth artists are Asian American, male, of approximately the same age and similarly rooted in the Bay Area: Kim grew up in Pacifica and graduated from the Academy of Art University, and Tomine was born in Sacramento and went to UC Berkeley. It's never quite entertaining to read Tomine's work, but it's a gripping and addictive exercise in voyeurism and masochism that doesn't exorcise inner demons so much as trace them out in sharp relief.Īnd then there's Kim, whose first collection, 'Same Difference and Other Stories,' won the trifecta of the comics world - the Eisner, Harvey and Ignatz awards - and was named one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2003.

As creator of the long-running title Optic Nerve, he's established himself as a master portraitist of the awkward and alienated - each new copy of Nerve is like opening the refrigerator door it sheds just enough light to send cockroaches of shame and self-hatred scurrying in a dozen different directions. Tomine is, of course, a longtime alt-comics fave. With the publication of two new graphic novels, 'Shortcomings' by Adrian Tomine and 'Good as Lily' by Derek Kirk Kim, my holiday shopping list just grew a little bit longer.

Now that the book has won a sheaf of the most prestigious awards in publishing, I just keep my trap shut and give the book as a gift to the not-yet-enlightened - a dozen copies to date, and counting. Rereading it led me to amend that statement: It was, I subsequently declared, one of the best Asian American novels I'd ever read, period. When I first read 'American Born Chinese,' the graphic novel by Fremont writer, artist and schoolteacher Gene Yang, I told friends that it was the best work of Asian American literature I'd read in a long time.

Shortcomings by adrian tomine