Either thought balloons or narrations or some sort of showy action, then those thoughts and realizations never existed.
ADRIAN TOMINEAnd 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.
More Adrian Tomine Quotes
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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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And now people even of our parents’ generation are familiar with the term “graphic novel,” which is kind of amazing.
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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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Look, there’s no denying that comics have moved dramatically into the mainstream in North American culture in the last 10 years.
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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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When email and the Internet came along, I never publish an email address. I just stuck with this P.O. Box address.
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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 never go home and take out those business cards and go to those websites.
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“What you do for a living?” It used to be easier just to tell people that I was a magazine illustrator than try to explain that I did comics.
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Especially for people of our generation, who really celebrated certain attitudes – the outsider.
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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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The experience of reading a comic should not be the time it takes to turn each page.
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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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I’m very grateful for it. But at the same time, it’s not a subculture-y thing anymore; it’s something that’s in the New York Times and the New Yorker.
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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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But if there was a mini-comic here in my hand, I’d read it while I ate my lunch.
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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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But there are definitely pros and cons. You could also look at it as bringing in a more diverse crowd.
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I feel like if people are going to go to the effort to get a stamp and, you know, put it on an envelope that, you know, it’s a big effort these days. So I often write back.
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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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I wanted to avoid doing what I thought people wanted me to do.
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The loner – it can have a real impact on the art when they realize, I have friends, I’m married, or I have kids. That’s certainly happened to me.
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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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For me, like, the more interesting a letter is I just get more excited and I know that this going to be great for my friends who are looking forward to reading that in my comic.
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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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I’m getting to a point in my life where my whole attitude about the relationship between myself and the audience is totally different.
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