And I do think it’s sort of too bad that what once was a safe haven for truly eccentric, outsider artists is no longer that thing.
ADRIAN TOMINEBut there are definitely pros and cons. You could also look at it as bringing in a more diverse crowd.
More Adrian Tomine Quotes
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There’s been a lot of progress recently. And I shouldn’t make a definitive statement about this.
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But not the kind of comics that they were used to, and no, it’s not pornography, etc.
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But my impression is that the main impediment to progress in that regard is the number of people who are choosing to make a go of it.
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And now people even of our parents’ generation are familiar with the term “graphic novel,” which is kind of amazing.
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If you’re changing diapers and going to the playground, any ambitions of being a cool guy have to fly out the window.
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You start to feel very weighted down sometimes.
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I wanted to avoid doing what I thought people wanted me to do.
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It’s psychologically a weird experience to be so aware of the fact that the real time of your life is moving much faster than the fictional time you’re trying to depict.
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Underground and alternative comics existed in a vacuum for years, where money really wasn’t an issue.
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I never go home and take out those business cards and go to those websites.
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I get the impression from some people that unless they get direct access to characters’ thoughts and realizations.
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Especially for people of our generation, who really celebrated certain attitudes – the outsider.
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I think a lot of the criticism had to do with disliking the characters – which, again, I take as something of a compliment.
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Either thought balloons or narrations or some sort of showy action, then those thoughts and realizations never existed.
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And with this sort of increased visibility, there’s more money going around in the industry, and it changes a lot, in terms of who gets into the business as a creator, who sticks with it, and who gets pushed out.
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I think there’s a lot of evolution that’s happened in intangible ways, in terms of how I think about the work or how I plan it out.
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No one would get into doing a black-and-white comic because they thought it might be a route to riches.
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I think in terms of getting new artists who are not in that sort of stereotypical teenage boy demographic.
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I sense a real difference in my work from the time I was younger and single and more involved in the world of music and going out to bars and all that.
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Who was trying to be cool by writing about young people and a certain kind of Bay Area culture that I was tangentially a part of.
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I’m also probably one of the few remaining holdouts who hasn’t consented to making the e-book versions of all my work, which is annoying to some of my publishers.
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There are certain artists and filmmakers who, I get the impression, are trying to show off how bad their characters can be, how immoral their characters can be.
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For a stretch of time, I got really caught up in the idea that what people liked about my work was that I was a young guy.
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The idea of trying to make the effort to produce something, to put something out into the world, rather than just taking in all the stuff the world’s putting out at you.
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Whereas the graphic novel is now being held up as something to aspire to and as something that’s respectable for adults to read.
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There were points at which I was trying to use my art to reflect positively on myself, to almost be flirtatious through the work.
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