ADRIAN TOMINE JUST CAN'T WIN.

The 33-year-old Japanese-American cartoonist, who has been creating comics since he was a teen, has for years faced questions about why he didn't address issues of his own heritage and background in his comics.

Now that he has, in his new graphic novel "Shortcomings" (Drawn & Quarterly), the results have been polarizing.

"There's some people who come up to me and say this is the first graphic novel or media in general they felt some kinship to in terms of portraying their experience with regards to being Asian American," said Tomine, who is appearing at Politics & Prose on Wednesday for a slide show and book signing. "And then there are other people who thought that it was distasteful, disrespectful or unnecessary."

Dealing with issues of race can always be touchy, and Tomine's work doesn't pull any punches. The story revolves around an Asian American man who finds himself pulled between his Asian girlfriend and the white woman he's fancying.

Even though Tomine, whose work can often be found on the cover of the New Yorker magazine, was initially put off by the idea of doing a book dealing with his heritage, he admits that he opened up a file at the back of his brain with ideas, anecdotes and characters that would allow him to tell a story that was consistent with his other works and didn't feel like a lesson on why racism is bad.

One of more gratifying things to come out of "Shortcomings" for Tomine was the reaction from non-Asian fans.

"It's interesting when I can meet somebody who has lived a completely different background from me and say, 'This was an insight for me,' or 'I didn't know about some of these issues but it was still an entertaining read for me.'

"Shortcomings" is collected from issues of Tomine's comic book series "Optic Nerve." In an industry that is moving toward publishing works directly in graphic novel format published by mainstream book companies, Tomine is still plugging along with the serialized comic.

"It's so funny that the thing that used to be the essence of the industry is now this weird antiquity" he said. "My reasons for sticking with it are purely personal. For me, it's my anachronistic, nostalgic personality that is trying to do my little bit to keep this old thing alive. I guess this is like some of these bands insisting on putting out a limited-edition vinyl of their album for themselves or a few of their fans."

Tomine also likes that by publishing the stories in the single issues, he is able to help out the specialty comic stores who he said played a big part in his life. While comic stores and book stores alike will stock the "Shortcomings" graphic novel, you can only find the single issues in specialty stores.

"I like the idea that 'Shortcomings' existed for four years as an exclusive item to comic book stores in comic book form and the only place you could get it was at a comic book store," Tomine said. "As much as possible, I would like to keep working that way."

In addition to his own comic work and his magazine and newspaper illustration, Tomine is also editing a series of graphic novel collections of the work of relatively unknown Japanese cartoonist Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Two collections have already been released and there is a third, "Good-Bye," due out in July.

"That's been just a really educational and enlightening side project for me," Tomine said.

Tatsumi was a Japanese cartoonist who started out in the '50s and produced a large amount of work — and he's actually still cartooning today.

"For a variety of reasons, he never really achieved a lot of recognition either in Japan or in America especially," Tomine said. "So we're just doing a bit of a retrospective of some of his work. It's impossible to publish it all."

Tomine first stumbled upon a bootleg translation of his work as a teenager. It was an eye-opener for him in terms of what can be done with comics. It also clarified to him that a lot of Americans have a very skewed about what Japanese cartooning is. And no, it's not all "Pokemon."

"It's like if you went to some other planet and showed them a bunch of 'Lethal Weapon' and 'Die Hard' movies, they'd say, 'Oh, I guess we don't like Earth cinema, it doesn't really appeal to us,'" Tomine said. "This is my little step to showing some of the range of what's out there."

» Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW; Wed., 7 p.m., free; 202-364-1919. (Van Ness-UDC)

Images courtesy Adrian Tomine/Drawn & Quarterly

Posted by Scott Rosenberg at 7:54 AM on March 5, 2008
Tagged in Books , Comic Books , Entertainment , The District , Top Stories , Van Ness