His mother is Dr. Satsuki Ina, Ph.D. and Professor Emeritus at California State University Sacramento's School of Education.

His grandmother was Shizuko Ina, who was pictured in Dorothea Lange's photo essay on the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.

[5] Tomine's parents divorced when he was two years old, after which he moved frequently, accompanying his mother to Fresno, CA, then Oregon, Germany, and Belgium, while spending summers with his father in Sacramento.

[7] In high school, he began writing, drawing, and self-publishing Optic Nerve, which he has continued producing as a regular comic book series for Drawn & Quarterly.

In an interview published in The Comics Journal #205, Tomine addressed criticisms of his work and discussed his influences; the magazine cover featured his self-parody of sorts, a sequence in which a hipster girl says to the reader, "I'm so cute!

Tomine cites Jaime Hernandez (Love and Rockets) and Daniel Clowes (Ghost World) as two of his biggest influences.

[11] In 2015, Tomine's graphic novel Killing and Dying, a collection of six short stories, was released to critical acclaim and became a New York Times Bestseller.

In its review of Killing and Dying, Wired magazine called Tomine “one of the most gifted graphic novelists of our time.” English author Zadie Smith praised the collection saying, “[Tomine] has more ideas in twenty panels than novelists have in a lifetime.” Comics artist Chris Ware said of the compilation: “As a serious cartoonist, one secretly hopes to create ‘That Book’: a book that can be passed to a literary-minded person who doesn’t normally read comics: one that doesn’t require any explanation or apology in advance and is developed enough in its attitude, humanity, and complexity that it speaks maturely for itself… Adrian Tomine‘s Killing and Dying may finally be That Book, and I’m amazed and heartened by it.” Tomine has contributed to several rock bands‘ album packaging design, including liner notes and album art for Eels' Electro-Shock Blues, "Last Stop: This Town", "Cancer for the Cure", and End Times; Yo La Tengo's 2006 covers albums Yo La Tengo Is Murdering the Classics and Murder in the Second Degree; The Softies' It's Love; and The Crabs' What Were Flames Now Smolder.