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There's a Little Creepy Stalker in All of Us

Victor Vazquez interviews Optic Nerve's creator Adrian Tomine, posterboy for weird comic realism.

By Victor Vazquez

Adrian Tomine, creator of the comic book series Optic Nerve, has a weird talent for creating tense and uneasy situations. He draws insecure human beings beautifully and then places speech bubbles over their heads with perfectly imperfect dialogue. Optic Nerve is human inelegance on paper.

It's hard to believe that this mild mannered bookish type could be able to muster enough empathy to realistically portray his truly weird (and truly real) characters. It's like he has some sort of spider sense for awkwardness. And somehow, despite (or more probably, because of) the strangeness of the characters, they are so much like us. Perhaps there's a little creepy stalker in all of us.

Youth Radio: Who are your influences?

Adrian Tomine: Boy, I don't know. There are too many to list. I was interested in superhero comics back when I was a kid. And when I reached a certain age I just kind of lost interest. When I was about 13 I bought a copy of Love and Rockets and that was kind of a big deal for me. That got me interested in comics and opened up my mind to what you could do with comics… so in terms of long term influence, that kind of changed my life.

YR: There's a lot of time between each of your issues. Do you have any explanation for the time?

AT: One thing is that I am a slow worker and I spend a lot of time between issues for commercial illustration stuff for magazines and things like that to supplement the income. So if I was working only on a comic then I would maybe be able to double my speed, but I do a lot of other stuff.

YR: How much of Optic Nerve is autobiographical?

AT: I don't know if I can give you a percentage, but every story is based on some sort of real experience. In some capacity it's sort of evolved from where it was more kind of obviously autobiographical, like the things that you would see in the comic you would have seen had happened to me. It's me kind of integrated into the story. I can only describe them now as emotionally autobiographical. They're expressing some real sentiment of mine but the specifics are sort of made up.

YR: You write situations involving women who are not in your age range. How do you accurately describe those emotions?

AT: I don't know, I guess it is sort of a combination of being an observer and taking a risk. And kind of making it up and seeing how it goes.

YR: You get a lot of letters that are sort of critical and mean. Do you write letters back to them personally?

AT: Everyone thinks because I don't print my responses in the comic that letters don't get answered. I write people back personally. Most of the people have gotten a response back. I don't cuss anyone out or get mad, but I do question their motives. And I wonder, if they dislike my work so much, then why are they wasting their time writing to me.

YR: Who do you think is your favorite character?

AT: I don't ever really think of any of these characters [as] being real people so I sort of cringe when I think about these people thinking these characters are real. I can't answer. I guess I am usually happiest with what I have done most recently. And then in a few years I will hate it.

YR: What about comics is so appealing to you?

AT: It's the thing that I have spent the most of my life doing.

YR: Would you ever expand into a cartoon or a short film?

AT: It's not high in my priority list. And lately I have been bombarded with student filmmakers — amateur filmmakers — who want to do a film based on my stories. 99 percent of the time they want to own the rights to it and it is just a big messy thing, I don't stand to benefit from it, and I am embarrassed by it. There was some novelty value to it, but now I just avoid the process. They have more stipulations and constraints about it. It's very unlikely that some dream project will come along… a lot of time, people want to take one of my stories and do animation with it and I just don't think it is right — I'd rather have real actors than animation.

— Victor Vazquez is a creepy little stalker.