Summer Blonde collects four of Tomine’s comics, all centered
around the theme of 20-something people with dysfunctional relationships. The
Summer Blonde story is kind of a love triangle between a hot blonde, her lame
boyfriend, a self-obsessed cad, and an obsessive stalker who probably has
Asperger’s Syndrome (not commonly diagnosed at the time.) The blonde girl
cheats on her boyfriend with a guy who thinks he’s an aspiring rock musician,
though his only entry to fame is a monthly appearance at open mic night.
Regardless, women are drawn to him like bees to honey (after all, who doesn’t
want to sleep with a rock musician?) and the next character, a depressed uncool
loner, listens through the wall with murderous envy.
What I love about Tomine’s characters is that it’s hard to
feel sympathy for them thanks to their comical flaws. The “blonde” of the story
seems to be cheating on her boyfriend because she feels like her looks entitle
her to it. There’s another story, Hawaiian Getaway, where a lonely overweight
Chinese American woman acts like a high schooler. Her life is stuck on pause,
she and her mother hate each other, and she spends her time acting like a
clingy child. Guys avoid her because she is, for lack of a better description,
not much fun to have around.
The stories in this book were all written and drawn in the
late 90’s, a time when computers were big and bulky, and email, though widely
used, hadn’t become dominant. People went to Tower Records to buy CD’s,
recordings were made on tapes, books were made of paper, and everyone talked on
the telephone. Texting on your phone was rare at the time, and without cell
phones, most of us made appointments over the phone and showed up on time. I
suspect we were better at communicating in those days. The story Bomb Scare,
about a bullied high schooler, involves nasty characters, but there’s no cyber
bullying. That would come later.
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