Hi I'm Andrew from Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. The Sound of Young America is an independent

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Live on tape from my house in Los Angeles, I'm Jesse Thorn and this is the Sound of Young

America from MaximumFund.org.

It's the Sound of Young America, I'm Jesse Thorn. As you probably already know a couple

of weeks ago we were in Seattle for the Bumber Shoot Music and Arts Festival. We had

a really fantastic time and over the next couple of weeks we'll be rolling out some

of the material we recorded live on stage there. In this podcast it's comics artist Adrian

Tomina. His critically acclaimed series Optic Nerve is known for its clean, beautiful

art and for its affecting portraits of young people's relationships and alienations.

Last year Tomina released the book length story shortcomings. It was one of the first pieces

of his work to address his identity as a Japanese American. Let's go to the stage of Bumber

Shoot in my conversation with Adrian Tomina.

Welcome to the show, Adrian. Thank you so much for being here. One of the things that

I was really interested in shortcomings and I thought was about as good a place to start

as Annie was the fact that you've recreated places in the book very directly, very literally.

I'm from the Bayaries, lived there many years and I recognized places in the book. Why did

you make that choice? Because I'm too lazy to be imaginative and invent things. That's

the honest answer really. I'm trying to create a realistic setting for the story. When I was

writing the book it was easier for me to come up with a dialogue and everything if I was

envisioning it in a place that I was familiar with. When it came to actually draw it I would

...