Killing And Dying - Tapa dura

Adrian Tomine can draw, think, write and feel. He sees everything, he knows everything; he's in your apartment, he's on the subway, he's in your dreams. He knows about ageing baseball fans and delusional horticulturists, he knows useless fathers and awkward nerd-girl stand-ups, he knows the single and the married, the mad and the sane, he knows zines and hardback 'graphic novels,' knows when to use a speech a bubble and when silence is enough. He has more ideas in twenty panels than novelists have in a lifetime. (ZADIE SMITH)

The most mature and sharp work of Tomine's career ... "Killing and Dying", is the collection's finest, and may even be the finest short story ever written/drawn in comics ... Tomine crams more real, actual human life into 22 pages than most novelists get into 200. Just like life, the best stories don't provide "closure" but open outwards, and "Killing and Dying" does just that. Few works of art in any medium have brought tears to my eyes, but the last four panels of this one do. It's a story that gets down so deeply to the heart of where stories come from that there's no way to get back out without tearing something inside. (CHRIS WARE Guardian)

If I had to describe Adrian Tomine to someone who didn't know his work, I would call him - I can't possibly conjure any higher praise - the Alice Munro of comics. But not even this quite does it. Tomine's characters and situations are more various than Munro's, and the emotional concision of his stories even more miraculous. (Rachel Cooke Observer)

These are stories about ordinary lives, drawn and scripted with acuity, wit and precision ... This quietly extraordinary book has earned its place among the year's best fiction in any medium. (Tim Martin Daily Telegraph)

Utterly beguiling. Tomine's storytelling avoids sentimentality like the plague, and yet he somehow evokes deep empathy and emotions through his sparseness and brevity. (Doug Johnstone The Big Issue)

Each of the six stories has a unique aesthetic. Tomine throws plot shifts and takes your full attention for granted. An absolute treasure. (Rosita Sweetman Irish Times)

Born in Sacramento in 1974, Adrian Tomine is the author of the acclaimed comic series Optic Nerve. His books include Shortcomings, Summer Blonde, Sleepwalk, Scenes from an Impending Marriage and, most recently, New York Drawings, all of which are published by Faber in the UK. Since 1999, his comics and illustrations have appeared regularly in The New Yorker, where he has created more than a dozen iconic covers. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughters.