If I had to describe Adrian Tomine to someone who didn’t know his work, I would call him – I can’t possibly conjure any higher praise – the Alice Munro of comics. But not even this quite does it. Tomine’s characters and situations are more various than Munro’s, and the emotional concision of his stories even more miraculous. Oh, the things he can do in a single frame. Sometimes, a person’s entire history seems to be right there in the angle of their jaw, the cast of their eyes. He’s an emotional x-ray machine. All-seeing, all-knowing: I wouldn’t want him ever to stand too close to me.
Killing and Dying, a collection of six stories, is Tomine’s first full-length work since Shortcomings in 2007. It’s also the first time he has worked in colour in a book (though he often uses it in the New Yorker, where his illustrations sometimes appear on the cover). I read it slowly, rationing myself to one story a night, and as soon as I’d finished it, I wanted to start all over again, the better to squeeze out every second of pleasure. Delusional gardeners, hopeless standups, feeble husbands, traumatised veterans: all are here, and many more besides.
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