Optic Nerve

I’m usually the one who catches onto things years after it hits big. Books (just finished Running with Scissors) Music (just bought Al Green) Movies (just saw Memoirs of a Geisha) Television (watched Twin Peaks for the first time 3 years ago). I’m guessing you get the point. Keeping with that theme, I’ve recently become obsessed with a comic book, which started in 1991.

It all began a few months back when I walked into this comic book shop in Brooklyn and picked up Optic Nerve by Adrian Tomine. I was instantly hooked, but I was so intimidated by the people mulling around the cash register using “comic book” jargon that I left without buying anything. Yesterday afternoon I walked back into the store and once again picked up Optic Nerve. This time I flipped through the book 32 Stories: The Complete Optic Nerve Mini-Comics, which is a compilation of his early stuff and again I was hooked. I’m proud to say that I actually bought it.

I was never into comic books. I liked the idea, but the sci-fi superhuman stuff kind of bored me (although I can take them in movie form) and the other stuff never caught my attention. Optic Nerve is different. It reads like scenes from real life and I enjoy that. I know I’m not being very articulate right now, but believe me when I say it’s real good.