Sunday, October 21, 2007
By EVELYN SHIH
STAFF WRITER
Reading like a graphic novel version of "The Break-Up," with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughan, "Shortcomings" details the devolution of a San Francisco couple.I say this only as fair warning. Like the movie, which was marketed as a comedy but turned out to be a sobering look at how love brings out the worst in people, this comic cuts a little close to the bone.
The couple in question, Ben Tanaka and Miko Hayashi, drag their relationship from sea to shining sea, from Berkeley, Calif., to New York City. Along the way, they wrestle with conceptions of race that they project onto themselves and one another. Tanaka is an angry Asian-American male whose self-hatred is almost reminiscent of Woody Allen. He doesn't have enough self-knowledge to curb his tongue, and at first you are tempted to be on Miko's side, but she turns out to have her own hypocrisies.
Tomine takes a slight detour into the love life of Alice Kim, Ben's lesbian friend, who serves as his sounding board for relationship issues. Alice hides her sexual orientation from her traditional Korean parents while going through girlfriends like there's no tomorrow. But though she is just as delusional about herself as Ben and Miko, she brings the voice of reason to Ben at key moments. She's not Margaret Cho -- the comedienne is actually referenced in the story -- but she, too, can tell it like it is.
Some of what Ben and Miko do to each other is truly cringe-worthy, but you feel inexplicably drawn along for the ride. There are breathtaking moments of intimate desperation, as well as confrontation so loud you can hear it jump off the page.
It helps that those pages zoom by with the speed and punch of a good short story. Tomine's black and white art is restrained but carefully, cinematically framed. In a book that tackles race, it helps that he swerves close to realism.
E-mail: shih@northjersey.com
Copyright © 2007 North Jersey Media Group Inc.
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