I enjoy getting any kind of mail. Like, 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.
— Adrian Tomine
I think that if you are looking at a comic that's made by one person, that there's just a level of intimacy that I don't really see anywhere else.
I used to live in Chris Rock's former apartment. I've got some junk mail for him if he wants it.
I think comics can be the basis for great films, but I think the focus of such a project should be on making the film as good as possible, not on painstakingly replicating the comic.
'Shortcomings' was me figuring out who I am.
There's a part of me that feels like it gets really frustrating to keep working in the manner that I made the book 'Shortcomings,' where everything is pretty accurate to the real world.
I do think that many Americans have a limited view of what constitutes Japanese cartooning based on what gets translated, so it's great to see an increase in diversity.
I really love New York, but I have to say, the humidity during the summer is a nightmare for a cartoonist. Not only am I sweating in my studio, my bristol board is curling up, the drafting tape is peeling off the board, my Rapidograph pens bleed the minute I put them to paper... it's a disaster.
I was thinking about what it was like for my parents to have a strange kid with a hobby or a pursuit that maybe they weren't that familiar with. It must have been a strange experience - nerve-wracking, in some ways.
What was a very private childhood hobby turned into a very a public, professional job, and I think that there's a lot of inhibition that can grow from that.
I would honestly be elated if I could wave a magic wand and eradicate my back catalog and then have a fresh crack at some of those ideas.
I intentionally approached each story in 'Killing and Dying' in a different way, and that includes the writing process.
There's a lot of books that I've purchased simply because of the cover design. On the other hand, there's certain books that, even if I'm very curious about the content, I can't bring myself to buy if I really dislike the cover.
For a long time, I was very resistant to the idea of online publication or even e-books or something like that.
I wanted to be as invisible as possible as an artist. I wanted to differentiate between myself and who I'm writing about.
I hated 'Dilbert.'
I'm Japanese, but restaurants in my hometown served the most sanitized versions of California rolls. I grew up eating a lot of Japanese food at home that my parents or grandparents made.
When email and the Internet came along, I never publish an email address. I just stuck with this P.O. Box address.
The type of cartooning that I think is generally referred to as 'alternative' or 'underground' is usually - the distinction is usually in terms of whether it's made by one person, the entire thing is done by one hand or more of a production line process, which is how the comics that we grew up reading were made.
I grew up with a very romantic, idealized vision of New York, probably because of all the books I read and the movies I watched.
My responsibility is to present things in a way that is realistic and true to the multifaceted world I've known... This is how I think the world is, not how it should be.
All my stories take place on the West Coast - not the beach, but smaller inland towns. I feel homesick, and I find inspiration in capturing that.
To be perfectly honest, if it was up to me, I would be invisible as an artist.
If anything, I feel a bit of pressure to write about less disenfranchised people, because I'd probably sell more books that way and would've already had some hot property that I could've sold to Hollywood.
On a very basic, concrete level, there have been times when my work, regardless of the content, has harmed relationships because I made that work such a primary priority in my life.
Fortunately, I've never had to be too critical of my own work, because the world is critical enough.
To me, one of the big fears of doing a big huge graphic novel is locking yourself into one style and getting halfway through it and going, 'Oh I made the wrong choice,' which is a recurring nightmare I have.
I'm always a little apprehensive about 'decoding' fictional stories.
In general, daily strips were just a regular part of my childhood. So even if I wasn't a huge fan of most of those strips, I still read them religiously every morning while I ate my cereal.
'Drawn & Quarterly' has always given me complete editorial control over my books and comics, so any decision about what to include or exclude from the book was my own.
I love the idea of trying to do the work of old-fashioned novelists of plotting and of really making you curious about what's going to happen next and all that, but also trying to load it up with your weird thoughts and opinions.
My 20s were peaceful, privileged, but still I felt the desire to write angsty dramas.
I started my career so early and developed in print for better or for worse, so I think there's a sense some of my earliest readers are kind of copilots on this voyage with me.
Even though I'm usually not conscious of it, I think drawing has always served a sort of therapeutic purpose in my life. There's something about the process of translating the messy chaos of real life into a clean, simple drawing that's always been comforting to me.
I started publishing my comic while I was still living with my parents.
Most normal boys, as they're growing up, they - in order to become attractive, they might, you know, get good at sports or join a rock band or develop good social skills, and for some reason, I thought that drawing comic books might be my route.
There have been a handful of assignments over the years that I've had to turn down due to time constraints, and I was fairly envious when I saw the finished product, beautifully illustrated by someone else.
A lot of my fears come out in my work rather than life.
I'm an unabashed fan of 'The New Yorker.' I do feel proud when I see my artwork in there.
The story entitled 'Good-Bye' is probably Tatsumi's most well-known work, and I think it's a good representation of many of Tatsumi's skills and stylistic tendencies.
When I'm sitting at my drafting table in my studio, I could really be anywhere.
When I started publishing my work, one of the biggest surprises to me was the recurring question about my background and why I wasn't doing more stories about Asian-Americans.
A lot of the qualities in 'Killing and Dying' is sort of a response to work I'd done previously. I wanted to push myself in some different directions.
My early comics are really reflective of being kind of a befuddled, single loser in the Bay Area, and I think having kids has been by far the most profound impact on me as a person and as an artist.
I think having kids has been the biggest influence on my work since I started publishing.
'Peanuts' is a life-long influence, going back to before I could even read.
The basic work schedule for me is whenever I'm not doing anything more important, like taking care of my kids or something. So, it's most of the day, five days a week, most evenings and sometimes on the weekends.
New York is a brutally expensive place to live, and the kind of person who might have the dedication and esoteric taste to make the comics that I would really love is finding it more relaxing to live elsewhere.
I had a mundane, happy childhood, without much struggle.
I never really thought of myself as an Asian-American cartoonist, any more than I thought of myself as a cartoonist who wears glasses.
