Author's Notes Part One ~ Life

BACKGROUND

Adrian Tomine was born May 31, 1974 in Sacramento, California to Dr. Chris Tomine and Dr. Satsuki Ina. Unfortunately the couple did not last and were divorced from one another when Adrian was only two years old, while his older brother Dylan was ten. Considering his great grandparents were from Japan proper Tomine is considered what we call a fourth-generation Japanese American. This term usually goes along with how much one person with a rich cultural background is more mixed with the society they grew up it. The bigger the generation gap the more the stereotype goes that they are immersed into america's social norms rather than their own backgrounds. As such Adrian frequently admits that his family is very much filled with "mild mannered Asians" (Tomine 22). After his parents divorced, Tomine moved frequently, accompanying his mother to Fresno, Oregon, Germany, and Belgium, while spending summers with his father in Sacramento. As a young child, Tomine enjoyed Spider-Man and Indiana Jones comics which he revealed as one of his sources for growing to love comic books. He attended high school at Rio Americano in Sacramento, where he started writing, drawing and self-publishing his comic Optic Nerve as series which he still continued even up to 2013.

After graduating from high school, Tomine moved from Sacramento, California to Berkeley, California in order to attend UC Berkeley. He started off as an art major though he soon changed his major over to Literature. During this time, he continued with his comic work as well as, met and started dating his current wife, Sarah Brennan. Though it was in NewYork that he would begin the next chapter of his life.After he moved to New York in 2004, the two got married which of course the preparation of was what let to the idea of his graphic biography Scenes From An Impending Marriage. On October 31, 2009, the couple had their first child, Nora Emiko Tomine. Once his daughter was born, he took joy in becoming a stay at home dad and experiencing new things about the city that he wasn't aware of before having his child.

For the longest time in the history of his career Tomine was self published as he began in his teenage years with the comic Optic Nerve. Though the second he hit the true professional scene he was smacked down with great criticism and backlash. Accused of creating 'emo' or 'trendy' characters for the sake of attention not to mention accusations that he ripped off the clean-line style from his friend Dan Clowes another artist. He addressed these issues as soon as possible and promptly stated he was more influenced by Jaime Hernandz. Even going so far as to consider publishing these letters in his book and doing a soft of self parody in one of his cover's for The Comics Journal. Since then Tomine took his would and focused more on the interpersonal relationships of people though had been known to dip into the areas of racial issues. It wasn't until his latest graphic novel Shortcomings that he really took a look into that facet of human life. He has worked on the art for several albums such as; End Times, It's Love and Where Were Flames Now Smolder.

Though his greatest and longest work has to be the one that has lasted his entire career Optic Nerve. Even to this day he view his work kind of different from his peers claiming that he is "still very envious of [the] monumental achievements my peers are making with their [own] gigantic graphic novels" (Pop!: Optic Nerve, 2011) hoping that Optic Nerve may one day be seen in such light. This ongoing series originally a mini-comic consisting of seven issues now span full length comics with multiple issues. He highlights often that it was Optic Nerve that had him learning all the high's and lows of the comic book scene including the problems of self production as "when [he] was using Xerox machines to reproduce the art" (QRD, "Adrian Tomine Interview December 2004"). Though it was these trials that he admits brought him to where he is today.