“Ever since I self-published the first xeroxed version of Optic Nerve, I’ve received surprisingly vehement, polarized responses,” Adrian Tomine answers unflinchingly, like a man who knows his way around a bushel full of hate mail. “I always imagined the experience of reading my comic would be something along the lines of sitting down with it for about 15 minutes, flipping through it, thinking either ‘that was pretty good’ or ‘I didn't care for that,’ and then just moving on with the rest of the day. But it’s gratifying to get a strong response out of people, even if it’s negative.”
Tomine’s long-running Optic Nerve series is known for a lot of things: there’s his decidedly clean drawing style, reminiscent of underground greats like Los Bros Hernandez and Dan Clowes. There’s also his slice-of-life plotlines, following the lives of fresh-out-of-college kids, and never straying too far from the oft banal struggles in life and love that dominate our early- and mid-twenties. And then there’s Tomine’s association with the indie rock scene—poster designs for bands like Weezer having forever nailed the artist to the genre, in much the same way that R. Crumb’s ’60s output became forever tied to psychedelics, and Peter Bagge’s Buddy Bradley became the poster boy for grunge.
After more than a decade spent working on his flagship series, perhaps more than anything else, Tomine has lovingly embraced the polarization of his readership, happily devoting the letters section of his book as much to (if not more to) his detractors than fans. Asked whether he thinks Optic Nerve is any more polarizing than your standard underground book, Tomine answers diplomatically, “It’s possible that they receive an equal amount of hate mail and just choose not to publish as much of it as I do. I’d like to think that, but I’m afraid to ask. So basically, either I’m just more of a masochist than my contemporaries, or my work just sucks a lot more!”
March 31, Rocketship, 208 Smith St. (betw. Baltic & Butler Sts.), B’klyn, 718-797-1348; 8, free.
