I do think it's getting more and more rare in this country to raise a kid with the attitude that creativity is something valuable. The idea of trying to make the effort to produce something, to put something out into the world, rather than just taking in all the stuff the world's putting out at you.

Adrian Tomine

Categorized in : Country Attitude Creativity

That partially due to the world of media and commerce, the idea of a comic book has been lost in the ghetto, whereas the graphic novel is now being held up as something to aspire to and as something that's respectable for adults to read.

Adrian Tomine

ghetto media book

I never go home and take out those business cards and go to those websites. But if there was a mini-comic here in my hand, I'd read it while I ate my lunch. I'm also probably one of the few remaining holdouts who hasn't consented to making the e-book versions of all my work, which is annoying to some of my publishers.

Adrian Tomine

home book hands

I think when I finally got it in my head that I was going to do the story, I wanted to avoid doing what I thought people wanted me to do.

Adrian Tomine

stories people thinking

It's psychologically a weird experience to be so aware of the fact that the real time of your life is moving much faster than the fictional time you're trying to depict. You start to feel very weighted down sometimes.

Adrian Tomine

real trying moving

There are certain artists and filmmakers who, I get the impression, are trying to show off how bad their characters can be, how immoral their characters can be.

Adrian Tomine

artist trying character

Underground and alternative comics existed in a vacuum for years, where money really wasn't an issue. No one would get into doing a black-and-white comic because they thought it might be a route to riches.

Adrian Tomine

issues black-and-white years

The experience of reading a comic should not be the time it takes to turn each page.

Adrian Tomine

comic pages reading

For me, as much about being a parent as it is about being a child.

Adrian Tomine

being-a-parent parent children

If you're changing diapers and going to the playground, any ambitions of being a cool guy have to fly out the window.

Adrian Tomine

guy ambition window

For a stretch of time, I got really caught up in the idea that what people liked about my work was that I was a young guy who was trying to be cool by writing about young people and a certain kind of Bay Area culture that I was tangentially a part of.

Adrian Tomine

guy writing people

I think a lot of the criticism had to do with disliking the characters - which, again, I take as something of a compliment.

Adrian Tomine

criticism character thinking

I think there's a lot of evolution that's happened in intangible ways, in terms of how I think about the work or how I plan it out.

Adrian Tomine

term evolution thinking

I think most cartoonists are solitary, lonely kids who use their work as a way to try to connect with the world. If I had any other skills that were more performative - if I could have been a musician or an actor - I'm sure I would have pursued that instead in order to get that instant feedback and to hear applause.

Adrian Tomine

lonely kids thinking

I was very aware of the fact that there are a lot of comics out there that I love, because I've grown up my whole life reading comics and I know every little nuance of the language and all the implications.

Adrian Tomine

reading littles love-is

Without fail, every cartoonist that I asked advice from bent over backward to be helpful and encouraging. It took many forms: some of it was just an implicit acceptance, like being invited along to the dinner with all of the good cartoonists, or sitting down at a drafting table with an artist and him showing me how to draw backgrounds and perspectives.

Adrian Tomine

perspective artist acceptance

I wanted all the responsibility to rest on the content of the story. I tried to make the visual style almost invisible.

Adrian Tomine

style responsibility stories

I get the impression from some people that unless they get direct access to characters' thoughts and realizations, either through thought balloons or narrations or some sort of showy action, then those thoughts and realizations never existed.

Adrian Tomine

realization character people

I sense a real difference in my work from the time I was younger and single and more involved in the world of music and going out to bars and all that. There were points at which I was trying to use my art to reflect positively on myself, to almost be flirtatious through the work.

Adrian Tomine

differences real art

If something's a little weird, it's Kafkaesque.

Adrian Tomine

ifs littles

I wanted it to be as readable as possible. I had the ambition of reaching a broader audience.

Adrian Tomine

reaching ambition wanted