Shuffled! Adrian Tomine
Shuffled! is a weekly column appearing every Thursday here on BPRLive. Each week, we welcome an APA artist to share some thoughts about the music they listen to. Check out the Shuffled! archive for past articles.
This week’s Shuffler: Adrian Tomine
Adrian Tomine had something of a head start working in comics. At 16, when he was still in high school in Sacramento, Tomine started writing and drawing a combination of fictional and autobiographical stories, self-publishing them in his mini-comic Optic Nerve, which he sold through local stores and mail order. At 17, he was hired to produce a monthly comic strip for the Tower Records store magazine Pulse!
In 1994, at age 20, Tomine began producing Optic Nerve as a regular comic book series for Drawn & Quarterly. After earning a degree in English Literature from the University of California at Berkele, thanks to his cool, clean, and very distinctive style, Tomine quickly found himself in high demand and his work has graced numerous CD and album covers as well as magazines like The New Yorker, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Time.
In 2004, D+Q collected the complete run of strips that was originally published in Pulse Magazine, along with comics originally published in Details and a host of other magazines from the past decade, in Scrapbook. A large section of Scrapbook is dedicated to Tomine’s extensive illustration and design work, featuring his best material over the years from virtually every major publication in America including the New Yorker, Details, Esquire, and the late JFK Jr.-edited George.
From 2004 to 2007, Tomine completed his most lengthy story arc thus far, Shortcomings, originally serialized in Optic Nerve issues #9-11, excerpted in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #13, and published as a graphic novel in Fall 2007. The racially-charged, volatile dialogues delineated in Shortcomings are unlike anything in Tomine’s previous work or, for that matter, comics in general.
Hit the party shuffle link now…
The Red Door
The Aislers Set
This brings back a lot of memories of San Francisco in the late-90s. It’s nice when you’re a fan of your friends’ creative endeavors. The drummer in the group, Yoshi Nakamoto, introduced me to a girl in New York who I am now married to. I still hold out hope that they’ll become an active band again, but in any case, we still have three great albums from them.
Business Time
Flight of the Conchords
When people first started telling me about these guys, my reaction was, “Why would I like something like that?” But I was pleasantly surprised, and I think the songs are terrific. I think Mel should have her own “Ropers”-like spin-off.
Diamonds From Sierra Leone
Kanye West
I feel like there’s two sides of Mr. West’s personality, and they’re constantly at war with each other. How else can you explain the fact that he mocks himself in this song for throwing a tantrum when he didn’t win an award, and then did the exact same thing the following year?
Little Brown Jug
Elizabeth Cotten
When I’m writing, I can’t listen to music with singing in it. This is perfect for that.
I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free
Nina Simone
Many years ago, a friend of mine gave me an unlabeled mix-tape and I remember particularly disliking a song that I later learned was by Nina Simone. I guess I wasn’t ready for it yet or something like that, because now I can’t get enough. Every album of hers has at least a song or two that can literally give me chills.
Last 5 posts by shuffled
- Shuffled! Theresa Vu of Magnetic North - July 17th, 2008
- Shuffled! Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha - July 10th, 2008
- Shuffled! Adriel Luis - July 3rd, 2008
- Shuffled! Leonard Shek - June 26th, 2008
- Shuffled! Patrick Rosal - June 19th, 2008
Tags: Shuffled!.