by Adrian Tomine
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Product Description
FROM THE PREEMINENT CARTOONIST OF HIS GENERATION, THE MOST ANTICIPATED GRAPHIC NOVEL OF 2007
Shortcomings, Adrian Tomine’s first long-form graphic novel, is the story of Ben Tanaka, a confused, obsessive Japanese American male in his late twenties, and his cross-country search for contentment (or at least the perfect girl). Along the way, Tomine tackles modern culture, sexual mores, and racial politics with brutal honesty and lacerating, irreverent humor, while deftly bringing to life a cast of painfully real antihero characters. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Tomine has acquired a cultlike fan following and has earned status as one of the most widely acclaimed cartoonists of our time.
Shortcomings was serialized in Tomine’s iconic comic book series Optic Nerve and was excerpted in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #13.
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Significant Seven, November 2007: Adrian Tomine draws his mid-twenties slackers with an impeccable, exact line for every slumpy gesture and cultivated rumple. In Shortcomings, this ex-wunderkind tackles a book-length comic for the first time after three collections of stories, and his maturity shows not so much in the ages of his characters, who are still slackly wandering, dropping out of grad school or managing a movie theater, but in his calm and masterful handling of his story, in which vividly individual characters wander through the maze of imposed and self-generated stereotypes of Asian and American identities (the title is a wry allusion to one of the most enduring of those assumptions). Never has that old commonplace that the personal is the political seemed more paralyzing, and more true. --Tom Nissley
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Average Customer Review:
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
 Graphic novel with depressing look at singlehood, 2008-08-28
Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine is a new entry in the quickly growing genre of graphic novels for adults. No costumed superheroes, no fantasy, just a powerful story told through pictures and words. Ben is a self-absorbed twenty-something living in San Francisco and going nowhere fast. His best friend is a promiscuous lesbian, and his girlfriend is frustrated with his lack of commitment to anything. When she moves to New York for her career, Ben is left rudderless and quickly sinks into a relationship with a co-worker that improves neither of them. He then follows the girlfriend to NY in hopes of renewing their relationship but instead finds her posing for nude pictures for an artist she's formed a new relationship with. This graphic novel is just a peek into someone's fairly boring life. It's sad and depressing, but Tomine's artwork is stellar and the dialogue is witty, even when it's Ben. The story itself feels hopeless, but I think that was probably the point. It didn't move me.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
More of the same..., 2008-08-17
This book is great and it still has Tomine's signature understated style (both visually and narratively), but he's not treading any new ground here.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Tomine in Top Form, 2008-06-22
Tomine has always been a great storyteller. His writing is wry and laugh-out-loud funny at times, but it's his drawings that really shine in this collected volume. His panels are wonderfully art directed and his renderings are beautifully nuanced and evocative. It's just a matter of time before someone offers this guy a shot at directing. Treat yourself and pick it up.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Yes, it does come up short..., 2008-06-08
A good read, with great art, but not enough to justify the cover price.
What's missing in this story is a sense of urgency that non-Asians should be able to connect with. Without the urgency, the non-Asian reader becomes the uninvolved observer, and this "shortcoming" alone diminishes the universal quality that I think the story ought to possess. Since, after all, this book isn't just meant to be read by the Asian-American community.
Spoiler: It also doesn't help that the lead, Ben Tanaka, is just full of hate. I wanted to like him, but when his girlfriend breaks up with him by the end of the story, I couldn't sympathize. It seems as if Tomine's thesis goes something like, "Not everything is about race. Dwell in it and your life falls apart." But where's the antithesis? If there were enough powerful instances that could justify Ben's attitude, then he could earn favor points in the reader's eye. Thematically, however, the story felt like it was on a one-way street.
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
This book's title is self descriptive, 2008-03-25
It's not so much that I did'nt enjoy the book, but was disappointed by it it does have, after all, shortcomings...a semi-interesting story.
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