GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Shortcomings

Andrew Wheeler

Andrew Wheeler spent 16 years as a book club editor, most notably for the Science Fiction Book Club, and has been a judge for the 2005 World Fantasy Awards and the 2009 Eisner Awards. He is now Marketing Manager for John Wiley & Sons.

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2 Responses

  1. boooring says:

    i read this book and i though is highly overrated. It's boring at best, there is no real character development as some people suggest, and the drawings are bleak and uninteresting.people get all excited over this kind of comics just because it's "real" and "mature", but that's not the point. i don't have any problem with mature stories, i have a problem with BAD stories.

  2. Van Jensen says:

    For all Tomine's artistic skill (it's actually too antiseptic for my tastes) and his ear for conversation, Shortcomings was nearly impossible to get through for me. Thank goodness it was short, I suppose. I found it to have much less in common with modern short fiction (I read and write in that world as well as comics) than with the post-Pekar indie comics that mistakenly believe the lack of a discernible plot is a commendable trait, and that ennui alone can carry a story. When compared with a book like Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds (another indie book from last year that has similar themes), Shortcomings feels like an empty vessel.