Shortcomings

For 16 years, Tomine’s comic book series Optic Nerve has captured the romantic and interpersonal quirks of the young, restless and impudent. Shortcomings, the Japanese-American cartoonist’s first graphic novel, was culled from three issues of the comic, and finds Tomine upping the dramatic ante, delving as much into racial tension as sexual tension. True, the stories in Tomine’s precise, draftsmanlike panels have always been peppered with diverse casts, but this is the first time race feels significant in his work.

As the story begins, we are thrown into the uneasy orbit of the likable but incredibly indignant Berkley, California, movie theater manager Ben Tanaka and his frustrated girlfriend, Miko Hayashi. The couple’s long-term relationship is in disrepair—the main reason being race. While Miko actively cultivates pride in her Asian-American heritage, Ben wants to forget about his.

Tomine displays a deep understanding about what really matters to indie-comics readers, and fleshes out a seen-it-before subject (i.e., race) in ways that are fresh, funny and never heavyhanded. In one scene that’s as humorous as it is cringeworthy, Miko discovers Ben’s largely Caucasian porn stash and becomes justifiably convinced white girls are his type. “That’s not true,” he says, fumbling nervously with the DVDs. “Look…there’s a, uh, Latina, girl in this one…or wait, maybe she’s on the All Girl Action disc.”

When the couple decides to take some time away from each other, Ben’s leap back into the dating pool is painfully awkward. His failed attempts at indulging his sexual fantasies only arouse more self-loathing. (At a crucial bedroom moment, he sweats and nervously shakes in front of his date, a white girl, convinced by a stereotype that his size is an issue.)

Tomine has never been one for cut-and-dried endings, and Shortcomings is no different. Rather, it’s a complex, often tragicomic cocktail muddled with sexual fetishes, shame and a desire for racial assimilation. But even when it’s apparent a Tomine character is destined for unhappiness, tracking his downward spiral from panel to poignant panel is still a joy.