Optic Nerve is a comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 series by cartoonist

Cartoonist

A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...

 Adrian Tomine

Adrian Tomine

Adrian Tomine , a popular contemporary cartoonist, is best known for his ongoing comic book series Optic Nerve and his periodical illustrations in The New Yorker.- Biography :...

. Originally self-published by Tomine in 1991 as a series of mini-comics

Minicomic

A minicomic is a creator-published comic book, often photocopied and stapled or with a handmade binding. In the United Kingdom and Europe the term "small press comic" is equivalent with minicomic reserved for those publications measuring A6 or less...

 (which have later been collected in a single volume, 32 Stories), the series has been published by Drawn and Quarterly

Drawn and Quarterly

Drawn and Quarterly is a Canadian comic book publishing company, headed by Chris Oliveros, and based in Montreal, Quebec. Its focus is on graphic novels and underground or alternative comics. Drawn and Quarterly was also the title of the company's flagship quarterly anthology during the 1990s...

 since 1995.

Tomine's style and subject matter are restrained and realistic. Many are set in Northern California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. Many of his stories for Optic Nerve feature Asian American

Asian American

Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...

 characters, including "Hawaiian Getaway," "Six-Day Cold," and "Layover." Adrian Tomine is Asian American and lives in Berkeley, California

Berkeley, California

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

. Many topics of his stories are at least partly autobiographical.

In the initial self-published issues, as well as the first eight Drawn & Quarterly issues (1995-2001), Optic Nerve was typically a collection of short stories. After an extended hiatus, Tomine resumed the comic in fall of 2004 and began his first multi-issue storyline with #9. The most recent issue, #12, was published in September 2011.

Collected editions

• 32 Stories: The Complete Optic Nerve Mini-Comics (1995, collects original mini-comics, ISBN 1-896597-00-9)
• Sleepwalk and Other Stories (1998, collects Optic Nerve #1-4, ISBN 1-896597-12-2)
• Summer Blonde (2002, collects Optic Nerve #5-8, SC: ISBN 1-896597-57-2, HC: ISBN 1-896597-49-1)
• Shortcomings
  Shortcomings (Graphic Novel)
  Shortcomings is a graphic novel by cartoonist Adrian Tomine. Shortcomings was originally serialized in issues #9 through #11 of Tomine's comic book collection Optic Nerve before being released as a whole in 2007...
  
  (2007, collects Optic Nerve #9-11, HC: ISBN 1-897299-16-8)