"Shortcomings" creator Adrian Tomine hits Montreal for a talk and signing at the Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore (211 Bernard W.), February 26, at 7 p.m. Hour.ca has a brief interview that includes this tidbit:

... I had to ask the author of the recently released, incredibly popular and critically acclaimed graphic novel Shortcomings about this line in the press release for his upcoming talk at the Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore: "He'll be presenting a slide show that confronts his critics who accused him of 'hiding' his racial identity behind his glasses." Huh?

"Ha ha! It's because for a long time when I used to draw autobiographical stories and I used to draw myself as a character, I'd draw myself with glasses that were just sort of opaque, empty and white", he says. "There was a lot of silly conjecture that I was maybe trying to disguise my own features. So in the slide show I go through a history of that in cartooning, going all the way back to Robert Crumb and even Charles Schultz - when he drew this character Marcie she just had these opaque little round glasses. That's just a starting point."