Summer Blonde

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, yes. Unique, no.
Review: An struggling novelist tries to connect with his High-School dream girl, and instead finds himself drawn into a relationship with her teenage sister.

A lonely man, obsessed with a girl he doesn't know, unwittingly goes from admirer to stalker.

A socially awkward young woman, unable to deal with people face-to-face, starts making cruel crank phone calls, looking for human contact of any kind.

Fate draws a high-school misfit closer to the girl of his dreams, much to the dismay of his only friend.

These are the stories and characters presented in Summer Blonde, written and drawn by Adrian Tomine. The people in this book, and the situations they find themselves in, are quite often unpleasent, and Tomine never flinches away from showing us the darker side of human nature. There are no easy answers to be had for the problems these characters encounter, and like real life, the end isn't always what we expect, or want. There were many times when I recognized familiar traits in these characters, and that's Tomine's real genius: He holds a mirror up to us, and shows us ourselves, and the world, warts and all.

This amazing book was my first exposure to Adrian Tomine, but definitely not my last. I can't recommend Summer Blonde enough.

Rating:
Summary: A Work of Staggering Genius...
Review: An struggling novelist tries to connect with his High-School dream girl, and instead finds himself drawn into a relationship with her teenage sister.

A lonely man, obsessed with a girl he doesn't know, unwittingly goes from admirer to stalker.

A socially awkward young woman, unable to deal with people face-to-face, starts making cruel crank phone calls, looking for human contact of any kind.

Fate draws a high-school misfit closer to the girl of his dreams, much to the dismay of his only friend.

These are the stories and characters presented in Summer Blonde, written and drawn by Adrian Tomine. The people in this book, and the situations they find themselves in, are quite often unpleasent, and Tomine never flinches away from showing us the darker side of human nature. There are no easy answers to be had for the problems these characters encounter, and like real life, the end isn't always what we expect, or want. There were many times when I recognized familiar traits in these characters, and that's Tomine's real genius: He holds a mirror up to us, and shows us ourselves, and the world, warts and all.

This amazing book was my first exposure to Adrian Tomine, but definitely not my last. I can't recommend Summer Blonde enough.

Rating:
Summary: More Misses than Hits
Review: I did not get interested in graphic novels until recently, when I ran across David B.'s amazing "Epileptic." I then read Daniel Clowes' "Ghost World," which was also very good. My next step was to purchase this book by Adrian Tomine, which is in very much the same vein as "Ghost World."

After two readings,though, I have to admit that I'm a bit disappointed with it. The stories are interesting, in their own way, and they do have substance, but the first two in particular are plagued by inadequate main characters. Tomine goes too far in making them ugly and unlikeable, to the point where they're not even realistic. It's impossible to care about these vain, petty, whiney young men. They don't even have a sense of humor. I can tolerate art that is dark and pessimistic, but only if there is enough substance to make it worthwhile. These first two stories do not overcome the extreme amount of self-loathing exhibited by the main characters.

Things improve with the third story, which is actually a collection of related vignettes about a young Asian-American woman. Although she is depressed, she at least shows some glimmers of a sense of humor, and I got the impression that if I met her, I would probably like her. The fourth story brings us back to high school, where a no-name loser-type character forms an odd but somehow functional relationship with the school's most notorious slut.

The artwork throughout this book is solid though not spectacular. It fits the mood of the stories, although there are a few lapses, such as the high school "jocks" in the last story who look like college kids from the 1950s.

I appreciate artists like Adrian Tomine who are using this medium to tell real stories about real people. I just think that these four stories miss the mark more often than they hit it. Maybe now I will look into some of his earlier material, which many people say is better than this.

Rating:
Summary: More Misses than Hits
Review: I did not get interested in graphic novels until recently, when I ran across David B.'s amazing "Epileptic." I then read Daniel Clowes' "Ghost World," which was also very good. My next step was to purchase this book by Adrian Tomine, which is in very much the same vein as "Ghost World."

After two readings,though, I have to admit that I'm a bit disappointed with it. The stories are interesting, in their own way, and they do have substance, but the first two in particular are plagued by inadequate main characters. Tomine goes too far in making them ugly and unlikeable, to the point where they're not even realistic. It's impossible to care about these vain, petty, whiney young men. They don't even have a sense of humor. I can tolerate art that is dark and pessimistic, but only if there is enough substance to make it worthwhile. These first two stories do not overcome the extreme amount of self-loathing exhibited by the main characters.

Things improve with the third story, which is actually a collection of related vignettes about a young Asian-American woman. Although she is depressed, she at least shows some glimmers of a sense of humor, and I got the impression that if I met her, I would probably like her. The fourth story brings us back to high school, where a no-name loser-type character forms an odd but somehow functional relationship with the school's most notorious slut.

The artwork throughout this book is solid though not spectacular. It fits the mood of the stories, although there are a few lapses, such as the high school "jocks" in the last story who look like college kids from the 1950s.

I appreciate artists like Adrian Tomine who are using this medium to tell real stories about real people. I just think that these four stories miss the mark more often than they hit it. Maybe now I will look into some of his earlier material, which many people say is better than this.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, yes. Unique, no.
Review: I first experienced Tomine's work when his collection of "32 Stories" was first published. That was quite a few years ago. I found the art to be a bit undecisive and the stories were a tad...angsty. No wait, I take that back. The stories were semi-angsty. I picked up Summer Blonde, not expecting a marvelous read, but to drop in on how Tomine's work has matured.

I am sorry to say that it's biggest problem is that it *has* matured. No longer are the stories angsty, or even semi-angsty. His quirky little "situations" have lost their edge and whatever naivity contributed to a personal, possibly magical work. In most of Blonde's snippets (mind you, they are snippets and I can envision Tomine dreaming up uber-wicked-buzz-moments that would make for an "endearingly cool" piece) you can see him desperately trying to hold on to youth and failing miserably in capturing any of it. Everything in this new collection SCREAMS that it wants to be involved in something deeper with more resonance and I foresee his next collection of stories making the complete and final transition towards a boring half-lived thirtysomethings world.

I would like to additonally point out that I first ran across ads for Summer Blonde in various asian and comic book publications. The ad consists of a beautiful blonde woman in a tight white top sneaking a scornful glance at the we the viewers. The caption reads: YOU WATCHED HER ALL SUMMER, DIDN'T YOU? DID SHE KNOW YOU WERE THERE? SUMMER BLONDE! Corny? juvenile? Pretentious? Alienating? You be the judge. I just wanted to put this out there because, for myself, it one hundred percent represents Tomine's weaknesses in art, storytelling, and marketing.

For general readers, I say skip this and head on to something MUCH more incredible in scope and vision like Aaron Cometbus' "Despite Everything." It may not have pretty little drawings, but it will give you that sense of youth and emotional pull Tomine could only dream of capturing.

I *do* recommend this title to all artist-writers, though. It has glimpses of ideas that could be handled and improved upon LEAGUES beyond what Tomine has done with them. Milk this collection for all it's worth; it can be done better, captivate a wider audience, and generally have more impact at the hands of someone with a more ambitious vision.

To Tomine I say this: Hey, it's not your fault. Some people have the skills to build a time machine and they choose to invent mechanical toothbrushes. Such is life.

Rating:
Summary: Four Very Similar Stories
Review: I really liked Tomine's first collection (32 Stories), and loved his last one (Sleepwalk and Other Stories), so shelled out for the hardcover edition of his latest. The four stories are beautifully drawn in Tomine's instantly recognizable precise style, but the storytelling is rather disappointing. His stuff has always been somewhat similar, focusing on loss and loneliness, but here here four protagonists (three male, one female) are little more than subtle variations of each other. Each is a kind of lonerish social outcast type who has deep problems relating to others and whose imagination is fertile territory for spawning sad obsessions. So you get a hipsterish writer who never got over high school and thus neglects his beautiful girlfriend due to his fascination with the younger sister of "the hot chick" from high school. Then you have the pimply-faced production designer at the alternative paper who seethes at his neighbor's casual sexual prowess and turns quasi-stalker in a surge of misguided imagination. There's the stoic Asian woman who simply cannot manage even a normal conversation. The last story is a totally banal high-school loser story which veers into a loser version of a John Hughes movie with a totally ridiculous ending. I still dig how Tomine just jumps into his character's lives, and manages to convey their whole life with a minimum of exposition, and then stops the story right when they're at a kind of emotional fork. The problem here is that the four stories are simply far too similar, almost as if he's stuck and has nothing else to say but further riffs on the same material he's been doing for ten years. I sure hope this isn't the case and that his next book will show a new maturation of his storytelling, 'cause he is a talented artist.

Rating:
Summary: Slap in the face
Review: Just like his other two books of collections, this one is another SLAP in your FACE, when it comes to your emotions. As I read the stories I get drawn into the charcaters' simple events, yet complex emotions surrounding those events and feel hit when the end comes. I love how all of Tomines stories are dreary, having and/or not having closure at the same time, depending on how you look at it. I also enjoy the fact that his stories get progressively longer (from the first book on) and so this books is full of 4 long stories. The graphics are good and do an amazing job at expressing emotions and reactions of the characters. Also, I love how all his comics are based on a miserable real world and are told truthfully.

Rating:
Summary: meow
Review: This book is...okay, it's not something thats grand or something that should be considered a cult comic. I mean there are stories in this comic that do absorb you and you feel for the chracter, but most of his stories are pretty much along the same lines, and after a while it gets sort of repeptive, if you're someone who is a hopeless romantic and starting to get into comics, then these comics that are for you, but if you're a teenager or a college student or whatever that is hateful and angsty, then, no, maybe you should read Daniel Clowes, or Nate Powell.