so(hot)right(now)

On Wednesday night, Comic superstar Adrian Tomine had a signing at (the awesome) Desert Island in Williamsburg to launch Optic Nerve 12. I won’t pretend to be any kind of expert in the graphic novel realm, but in the case of Optic Nerve, I’m a major fangirl.

I distinctly remember the first time I came across it – a friend was having a big sale/clear-out of his record store, and there was a copy of an early issue on the coffee table (not for sale). I opened it to a random page, and then had to sit down to read the next page, and the next… I spent the next hour ignoring everyone and everything around me. I couldn’t put it down.

There’s something so captivating and honest about his characters, and you end up reading the spaces around them as much as their expressions or words. So it was amazing to meet him in person and have a chat to him while he drew this for me, and customised another book for a friend. It’s awesome to meet your heroes and discover they’re just as approachable, sincere and funny as you imagined they’d be.