the loneliness of a long distance cartoonist

The cartoons in Tomine’s last two collections have shown a range from multi-panel pages to intricate illustrations working in conjunction with more formal prose. Gen X-ers will find themselves reflected here though you may have fewer obsessive fans to contend with. But, it is also the chronicle of a man maturing through the pitfalls of a dream life that begins in solitude and ends in fatherhood. The book begins with a quote from Clowes about being a famous cartoonist: “That’s like being the most famous badminton player.” The tone is therefore set for a memoir full of slights, self-deprecation, casual racism and self-inflicted wounds from the life of a man who knew he wanted to be a cartoonist from his earliest moments and became something of a wunderkind when he started publishing comics in Pulse! magazine and Drawn and Quarterly as a teen. It contains those answers they just might not be the ones you want. He has attained the kind of respect and success we all crave in the arts, making his new memoir, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist, an object of curiosity with the potential to instruct how such a career can be obtained. Two previous collections, Killing and Dying and Shortcomings, are literary works of the finest order and his creative touch has extended to The New Yorker, where he crafts many of its stunning covers. Working in short, self-contained stories, he elevates the form like the work of the Hernandez brothers or Daniel Clowes.

Adrian Tomine creates the kinds of comics that inspire others to want to make comics.

The loneliness of a long distance cartoonist