I’m always surprised when I don’t see Abel’s name in those Buzzfeed “Books to read after you graduate and feel like you have no idea what the hell you’re doing with your life” lists. Exploring the relationship between sexuality, status and what it means to be an Asian in the states, Shortcomings is something of an anthem - a must read for anyone, particularly Generation Y. Shortcomings, the story of three young Asian Americans and the struggles they face as minorities,addressed things I had never dealt with, and looking back on it, Lenny’s gift was probably a veiled cue, an invitation for me to “check my privilege,” though that phrase wasn’t in our vernacular yet. And yet…despite all of this attention, it wasn’t until a chance encounter in a screenwriting class something like six years later that I met another person who’d even heard of Shortcomings, let alone Tomine at all. I didn’t know it at the time, but Shortcomings had been met with critical acclaim upon first being published and Adrian Tomine, its author, was heralded in The New York Times as the Philip Roth of graphic novelists. I was sixteen, he was seventeen - we secretly met up in a Barnes & Noble - I told my parents I was meeting a friend from school - and he bought me a copy of this book. I discovered Shortcomings via a Korean boy named Lenny I met on Neopets. It transports you to a fantastical - though, admittedly, slightly terrifying - world you’ll want to return to again and again. It’s witchy, it’s whimsical, it’s replete with gothic imagery and not too unlike a Roald Dahl book or L.
Following characters like Strega Pez, a mute who speaks only through a Pez candy that comes out of a slit in her throat, Perfidia and Hindrance, Siamese twins who live in a hollowed out tree stump, and Friend the Girl, the only voice of reason and most normal girl of the entire bunch, Meat Cake is everything you’d want in…well, anything. The artwork is carefully drawn and rich in detail, with a distinct Victorian flavor - Dame Darcy’s trademark. Meat Cake was my everything growing up: it informed the way I wrote stories, my own artwork was a complete and total rip off of Dame Darcy’s (culminating in a 2005 spinoff fanzine I made that I tried desperately to get included in Wikipedia), I named my pets after its universe’s strange inhabitants, and boy did I love Dame Darcy’s Paper Doll Fun. While this one is technically a comic book, I had to include it on the list and I also had to make it number one. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.
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