Summer Blonde [Paperback]

Adrian Tomine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2003

Adrian Tomine’s cult comix series Optic Nerve is finally collected into one sharp-looking hardcover volume. Described as the Raymond Carver of comix, Tomine constructs tales of emotional disconnection with an ear for painfully real dialogue. Combined with his deft black and white depictions of urbane lifestyles, Tomine’s fans have often accused him of eavesdropping in on their most intimate moments and, with forensic skill, laying their lives bare. The conflicts between emotional gratification, narcissistic neediness and moral discernment mark the title story in which a socially crippled man nurses an obsessive crush on a young woman. He watches close up, paralyzed by his guilt, as her beauty catches the eye of his neighbor: a hip, selfish young man with a short attention span. One of Optic Nerve’s most popular stories, `Hawaiian Getaway,` features Hilary, telephone service rep who is having the worst week of her life. She lost her job, her apartment, and her grandmother. Close to the edge, she is losing her grip. Reaching out to random strangers on the phone, Hilary is looking for someone to help her. In "Alter Ego" a successful young author has writer`s block. He can`t, or won`t, decide between another ghostwriting gig and finishing his second ‘real’ novel. He stalls on committing to his novel and his girlfriend when a chance postcard leads him to flirt with fantasies of changing the past. Finally, "Bomb Scare" documents the early unease of his generation by setting this coming-of-age story during the tense months of the Gulf War, the event that ushered in the 1990s.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Tomine is at the forefront of the younger generation of alternative-comics artists; now in his mid-twenties, he began publishing at age 16. Known for his clear, direct drawing and acute scrutiny of his contemporaries, Tomine has an understated approach, light on plot but rich with memorable characterization. The young protagonists of these four stories range from alienated to out-and-out misanthropic and include a successful but shy novelist who seeks out the girl he was obsessed with in high school; a lonely woman who loses her job and veers into erratic behavior; and a pair of high-school outcasts who improbably wind up together. Tomine shows them dealing with bad attitudes, bad choices, and bad sex. The narratives pick up at seemingly arbitrary points in the characters' lives and end just as abruptly. They are snapshots of lives just gathering steam. Tomine's figures look a bit stiff, and sometimes his panels are cramped, but that isn't inappropriate to depicting the constricted lives of his not particularly likable but always sympathetic characters. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Tomine, who has become a cult figure, has brought an aura of cool realism to the world of comics with its blend of the best of independent comics and contemporary fiction." --Los Angeles New Times

"Emotionally adroit...Summer Blonde is compulsive melancholy" --Village Voice Literary Supplement

"...has the kind of detail and romantic yearning which has made Tomine a cult figure to the still young and the kind of artistry which has made him a classic storyteller to anyone of any age." --San Francisco Chronicle

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 132 pages
• Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly (June 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9781896597577
• ISBN-13: 978-1896597577
• ASIN: 1896597572
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 0.4 x 10.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #223,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #43 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Publishers > Drawn and Quarterly

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Slap in the face February 2, 2004

By Lena Tumasyan

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Just like his other two books of collections, this one is another SLAP in your FACE, when it comes to your emotions. As I read the stories I get drawn into the charcaters' simple events, yet complex emotions surrounding those events and feel hit when the end comes. I love how all of Tomines stories are dreary, having and/or not having closure at the same time, depending on how you look at it. I also enjoy the fact that his stories get progressively longer (from the first book on) and so this books is full of 4 long stories. The graphics are good and do an amazing job at expressing emotions and reactions of the characters. Also, I love how all his comics are based on a miserable real world and are told truthfully.

22 of 28 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Four Very Similar Stories May 20, 2003

By A. Ross HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I really liked Tomine's first collection (32 Stories), and loved his last one (Sleepwalk and Other Stories), so shelled out for the hardcover edition of his latest. The four stories are beautifully drawn in Tomine's instantly recognizable precise style, but the storytelling is rather disappointing. His stuff has always been somewhat similar, focusing on loss and loneliness, but here here four protagonists (three male, one female) are little more than subtle variations of each other. Each is a kind of lonerish social outcast type who has deep problems relating to others and whose imagination is fertile territory for spawning sad obsessions. So you get a hipsterish writer who never got over high school and thus neglects his beautiful girlfriend due to his fascination with the younger sister of "the hot chick" from high school. Then you have the pimply-faced production designer at the alternative paper who seethes at his neighbor's casual sexual prowess and turns quasi-stalker in a surge of misguided imagination. There's the stoic Asian woman who simply cannot manage even a normal conversation. The last story is a totally banal high-school loser story which veers into a loser version of a John Hughes movie with a totally ridiculous ending. I still dig how Tomine just jumps into his character's lives, and manages to convey their whole life with a minimum of exposition, and then stops the story right when they're at a kind of emotional fork. The problem here is that the four stories are simply far too similar, almost as if he's stuck and has nothing else to say but further riffs on the same material he's been doing for ten years. I sure hope this isn't the case and that his next book will show a new maturation of his storytelling, 'cause he is a talented artist.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Work of Staggering Genius... September 9, 2002

By Daniel V. Reilly VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

An struggling novelist tries to connect with his High-School dream girl, and instead finds himself drawn into a relationship with her teenage sister.

A lonely man, obsessed with a girl he doesn't know, unwittingly goes from admirer to stalker.

A socially awkward young woman, unable to deal with people face-to-face, starts making cruel crank phone calls, looking for human contact of any kind.

Fate draws a high-school misfit closer to the girl of his dreams, much to the dismay of his only friend.

These are the stories and characters presented in Summer Blonde, written and drawn by Adrian Tomine. The people in this book, and the situations they find themselves in, are quite often unpleasent, and Tomine never flinches away from showing us the darker side of human nature. There are no easy answers to be had for the problems these characters encounter, and like real life, the end isn't always what we expect, or want. There were many times when I recognized familiar traits in these characters, and that's Tomine's real genius: He holds a mirror up to us, and shows us ourselves, and the world, warts and all.

This amazing book was my first exposure to Adrian Tomine, but definitely not my last. I can't recommend Summer Blonde enough.