#GrailReads
Killing and Dying
by Adrian Tomine

There’s a certain brand of humanity in Adrian Tomine’s Killing and Dying. On the one hand, the characters in this book seem outlandish, bizzare, and funny but it also seems too real. Dealing with intimate topics like pride, death, and abuse is never easy. Making it a little bit funnier seems a lot harder but Tomine does all of these without sacrificing his characters’ humanity. From a frustrated hortisculpturist (horticulture sculptor), to a pair of diehard baseball fans, and a dad who’s struggling with his daughter, all of these characters are portrayed as human as possible.

Tomine’s art complements his narratives by being consistent and inconsistent with his techniques throughout the whole book. His consistency with his style, color, and proportion is placed alternately with his inconsistency which intends to adapt and change to each story. It varies from being a sunday comic strip to an artful comic devoid of speech bubbles showing a wide range of possibilities to what the comic medium is capable of doing. Thus, showcasing Tomine’s mastery over it.

To be human is to be vulnerable. This vulnerability is what makes Tomine’s stories and characters relatable and realistic, no matter how absurd they are and the situations that they’re in.

Review by Drei Cortez

Killing and Dying is published by Drawn and Quarterly (@drawnandquarterly) and is available in comic shops and bookstores worldwide.

This post originally appeared in the UP Grail Instagram Account @upgrail
#GrailReads is an initiative that had UP Grail members review comics.