Adrian Tomine answers his readers' burning questions in his latest graphic novel
CBC Radio | Posted: January 6, 2025 7:03 PM | Last Updated: January 6
The American cartoonist discussed Q&A on Bookends with Mattea Roach
Before the internet, many comic books included a section to send letters to the creators and get insight into their work and their process.
When cartoonist Adrian Tomine was growing up, he was the one sending those letters — and now he's the one answering questions from his readers.
Known for his series Optic Nerve, his memoir The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist and his work in The New Yorker, Tomine's latest book, Q&A, dives into the questions he most often hears, and responds to them with a combination of words, photos and illustrations.
"Sometimes I look at where I am now, and I can't believe that I've ended up here because I was flailing around so wildly on my own without any kind of guidance," said Tomine on Bookends with Mattea Roach.
While he doles out advice and shares his experiences in Q&A, he explained that he feels like the book should be subtitled "But that's just my opinion" or "That's just me" because he knows his path is not universal to all aspiring artists.
"I don't necessarily know that what has worked for me is going to be best for everyone else, and I don't want to be overly didactic about it," he said.
Tomine joined Mattea Roach to discuss his journey to cartooning and how feedback pushes him to his full potential.
Mattea Roach: What do you personally get out of that relationship with your readers and what makes you want to respond in this really fulsome way?
Adrian Tomine: The relationship that you're talking about, has been a pretty important part of my whole career. I started getting feedback through the mail about my comics almost as soon as I started putting them out there into the world. I started doing that when I was a teenager and I was self-publishing little handmade zines that I would distribute to stores mostly around Sacramento in California. I think even after the first one was put up on consignment at a local store, I got some mail at the address that I published in there. That went on for years. I think by publishing people's letters and printing an address in my comics, that just sort of encouraged people to keep asking me questions.
It's hard to describe that experience in the present-day because that was sort of the only path of contact between the artist and the reader. And I'd been very much on the other side of that by, sending letters to artists that I admired. So to have people writing to me and asking questions and sending me things, it was gratifying, but also educational, inspirational. If people have read the old comics, they'll know that there was a lot of criticism that came my way that I was happy to publish, rather than hide from. I learned a lot from that. Probably more than the praise.
MR: How has your relationship with your wife, Sarah, changed the stuff that you're putting out?
AT: I give her full credit to the longevity of my career. I think that I would have, well, not just in my career, but in my life, I would have stayed on a very prescribed path. And in a lot of ways, she broke me out of that.
But in terms of my work, I described this in the book that when I met her, I'd been publishing my work for a number of years, but she was not aware of it. And so we just had been dating for a while before she finally read some of my books. I remember being very nervous about this moment because I knew it would come eventually. I remember her closing the book and having this reaction of saying like, "Yeah, that was, that was great. I really liked it." And I could tell she was holding back as she knows I'm very sensitive to the slightest criticism from people that I respect.
I sort of prodded her and she said, "It's just that, in life, you're so funny." I took that as a compliment as a person, but as sort of a devastating criticism of my work. It opened my eyes to the fact of how reactionary my work and my career had been up to that point of where I was trying to sort of define myself in opposition to other things.
I took that as a compliment as a person, but as sort of a devastating criticism of my work. - Adrian Tomine
I was very insecure about presenting myself as an alternative cartoonist or an underground cartoonist. And so I was really in some ways, consciously, but in a lot of unconscious ways, sort of resisting a lot of aspects of the comics medium because I thought it would seem too juvenile or too silly or too lightweight or something.
Some of that had to do with aesthetic things like colour or just really specific things like motion lines or thought bubbles. But I think it also had to do with the tone. I was determined to present myself as literary and artistic and serious, all of which makes me cringe a lot when I think about and go back and look at some of that early work. It's really with Sarah's encouragement that I let go of a lot of that posturing.
MR: Now, having been publishing comics and publishing creative work for several decades since you were a teenager, is there still a bit of a surreal feeling that you're now an adult man who has two kids and you get to draw cartoons and people pay you for your cartoons?
AT: It's surreal and I feel lucky for it. And I understand that it's a big source of irritation for a lot of people, including the three people that I live with. I can't remember the words exactly, but there's a quote from my daughter, where she was having a tantrum about having to get dressed and go to school. And she said something like, "Well, all you have to do is stay home and draw pictures and eat soup in front of the TV" or something like that. It was like this outrageous injustice that she had to get dressed and go to school.
It's not lost on me, if that makes things any better. But to be fair, I will also say that there's been many times in my life where you have that feeling of "be careful what you wish for." Because there were a lot of times when I was younger where I was like, "I just want to be left alone to sit in my room and draw comics." And then there are definitely some lonely, lonely days where you wish that had not come true.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It was produced by Ashly July with help from Ailey Yamamoto.