Review: Shortcomings

Shortcomings
Writing and Art by Adrian Tomine
Published by Drawn and Quarterly. $19.95 USD

Adrian Tomine finally concludes and collects his three part story from his Optic Nerve comic into a typically handsome D&Q graphic novel. Maybe too handsome. When I look at the serious faces on the cover, framed in a serious beige, I'm wondering what kind of message Tomine and the publisher are trying to convey to prospective readers. Reading the inside cover, we're told that the story "pits California against New York, devotion against desire, and trust against truth," but that even though the "charged, volatile dialogues" are "unlike anything in...comics in general," this is "no mere polemic." What a bunch of bullshit.

Shortcomings is a very smart, observant story about desire, yes. Most importantly, it's very funny--Ben Tanaka is one of the most enjoyably loathsome characters I've ever seen in comics. He's sort of like the Jon Favreau character in Swingers in that you can see him blowing it with women and are helpless to stop it, but he's different from that character in that you don't really root for him. You're very interested, yes, but he's not a sympathetic character. He's dishonest, directionless, self-absorbed, unsupportive, and completely in denial. I was reading a comment on another graphic novel today where the person called this kind of story "mandolescence," or a seemingly adult male going through a kind of coming of age story. That's what this is, and though it is among the best of its kind, ironically Tomine will get more mileage out of it because the lead character isn't white like all the others.

Rather, this is not a shocking new chapter in Tomine's career but a natural progression. As Andre Arnold wrote of his last graphic novel, Summer Blonde, Tomine captures "the slacker generation, growing older but not wiser." Tomine is a tightass with hangups like anyone else, and his work continues to improve because clearly here he evinces a growing awareness of those hangups and a willingness to mine them for drama and comedy. I don't know that Tomine is into blonde, white women per se, but I can't believe there's not a lot of Ben in Adrian, and likewise I have to think he has a friend like the refreshingly self-aware, lustful Alice Kim. She's a great character, and proof Tomine can write women well, and she is an excellent counterpoint to Ben in many ways. She's almost fully realized, and only held back a little by her wanting to be accepted by her parents for being gay. In fact, the only problem Tomine has here is in writing Miko. She's fine, but the cover copy would lead one to think this is as much her story as Ben's, and that "what unites them is their shared hypocrisies, their double standards," blah blah blah. No, she's just Ben's girlfriend, and he drives her away because he's an asshole, and the next time we see her she is in touch with her sexuality and has found someone who appreciates her. If Tomine is making a point with her new boyfriend being white but into Asian women, it's a small one, and unfair to use as an example of her "hypocrisy" when she never said she would only date Asian men.

The original title of this story was, "White on Rice," which is funnier than Shortcomings, and more apt. Shortcomings seems to refer to the stereotype about Asian men having small penises, which is only a brief joke in the book. Amusingly, the book's cover, under the dustjacket, features a yardstick or tape measure at the bottom. The fact that, for whatever reason, Ben Tanaka has a thing for white, blonde women is interesting, but it's just one characteristic of Ben. Tomine and his publisher should have trusted the strength of the story and the characterization rather than trying to paint this book as some shocking exploration of racial identity. The book is excellent--just go into it expecting deft writing, crisp, evocative artwork, and lots of dry and bawdy humor, and if you find there's more to it than that, bonus for you.