| Eisner award-winning comic book writer/artist Alex Robinson made a splash with his collected edition of Box Office Poison from Top Shelf Comix. The book, 608-paged magnum opus chronicling the lives of post-college friends in New York, received much acclaim for Robinson’s naturalistic writing style and clear, expressive artwork. As Robinson worked on his next book, a collection of stories following-up on the Box Office Poison gang called BOP! was released to entertain as well as tide fans over. In 2005, four long years after Box Office Poison first appeared, Robinson’s second hefty graphic novel, entitled Tricked, was released to the public, with even more acclaim and awards. His writing as sharp as ever, and his artistic style growing and developing impressively, Robinson is definitely a creator to watch. Now enjoying the success of his books while considering his next project, Robinson was kind enough to answer some email questions from fan and the footnote contributor D.J. Kirkbride for this first 2006 edition of “Hooray for Comics”…
 Way back before all of your comic book success, I read that you worked at Barnes & Noble. What department were you in? I ask because me and my pal Dustin (who runs the footnote) met at B & N. I was in shipping and receiving, he worked the floor. The pay sucked, but I actually look on that job fondly now...
Yeah, I worked as a floor clerk at the Barnes & Noble on 18th and 5th Ave here in Manhattan for about seven years. Over the years I worked a bunch of different sections: fiction, science, sociology, history, English as a Second Language. That was the worst area to work in. I would agree that it was best crappy job I ever had. Sometimes I actually miss having a day job because I met a lot of cool people at the store, including my wife, and it kept me social. I’m an anti-social person by nature so it was good that it forced me to interact with humans.
After rocking the world of retail for a while, you got into to the comics, right? How'd that come about? Lifelong dream and all that good stuff?
Well, I was already going to art school for cartooning when I started at the bookstore. After I graduated I really put my nose to the grindstone and started drawing my own comics in the hope of getting them published. I put out a bunch of mini-comics and after about three years Antarctic Press offered to start publishing my stuff. It’s funny that it was only three years or so after I graduated because it felt like much, much longer at the time. I guess three years feels a lot longer to someone in their early twenties than someone in their late thirties.
But, yeah, I’d always wanted to be a cartoonist of one kind of another.
Like most creators, you've read comics since you were a kid. What books meant a lot to you growing up? Did they influence your current output?
I think so. I remember reading Archie comics when I was a little kid, and I can see how they had an impact on my work. When people would ask me to describe my first book, Box Office Poison, I would frequently say it was like Archie with cursing and nudity. It doesn’t look much like Archie, of course, but they’re both stories that draw heavily on characterization. I read other comics when I was little, like the Harvey line, MAD and the Sunday comics, which I adored. I didn’t start reading and collecting superhero comics until I was in seventh or eighth grade (about, what? Thirteen years old or so?). I remember my friends being scandalized that I bought $7 worth of comics at one time! I loved John Byrne’s superhero comics of the 1980s. To me, his run on Fantastic Four are the best superhero comics ever.
 On the other end of the comic spectrum from spandex-clad adventures is your first book, the very “real life” Box Office Poison, which has become a huge success with that single volume from the fine folks at Top Shelf now on the shelves of stores like Barnes & Noble as well as comic shops. It started out as a bi-monthly comic, though. Was that a success from the get-go or a slow build? How far into the stories did you know you were going to end up creating well over 600 pages of about these characters' lives?
Actually, in terms of sales, the serialized version was never a hit. The first issue came out in 1996, right when a bunch of distributors went out of business, and sales dropped with each issue for the first year or so. Thankfully, Wizard gave the book a great write-up and that boosted sales a bit and kept it from getting the axe. Other than first issue, it never sold more than 2,000 copies, I don’t think. That actually probably helped sell the big book, since most people had never seen the material. When I first started the story I didn’t really have a big plot in mind or know how far it would go. I just wanted to tell stories and get to know the characters. I was a big fan of Cerebus, however, so the idea of doing a massive book was something I wasn’t opposed to trying. I think after about sixty or so I came up with the big-picture plot and figured it would take about twenty issues to tell, which turned out to be about right. If you look at the book, the first sixty pages are just sort of loosely connected vignettes. It isn’t until Dorothy and Mr. Flavor show up that the plot really begins.
Right. That book, like you said due to being a collection of single-issue comics, is very episodic, especially at the beginning. Did you have an overall arch in mind or did one develop over time?
My strategy was to sort of have the chapters alternate between moving the plot and digressions. That is, I would have one chapter that would move the story forward, but the next one would be a hopefully entertaining or revealing side trip. Stuff like the ice skating scene, or the fight with the landlady or the Christmas scenes aren’t really needed for the story, but I thought they were fun diversions. I think that adds a bit of reality to the book, also, because in real life some things that happen to you have a lasting impact and contribute to the “plot” of your life but there’s also a lot of stuff that just happens. Movies and TV rarely reflect that aspect of life, because they’re expensive to make and time is at a premium.
So, do you write an outline for or plot your books first, then draw them?
I usually have a loose outline in my head. I’ll know how a story will end and certain things that have to happen or that I want to happen, but I never write out more than a page or two at a time. I like to keep it fresh, to keep myself interested. I can’t imagine drawing a story from a complete, detailed script. I think I would get bored, knowing everything that was going to happen. The only drawbacks are that writer’s block can cripple me and editing is harder. Once you’ve drawn seven pages of a scene you’re loath to scrap it and start over.
After Box Office Poison and your companion piece, BOP!, you took four years to work on your follow-up, Tricked. Was it scary not having that published output ever couple of months? How'd it affect the story?
 I was very skeptical, at first, and worried that without a presence in the store every few months people would forget about me. That was actually one of the reasons we came out with the BOP! Book—just to remind people and keep the embers glowing. In terms of the story, I think it actually helped in the long run. The first story I started after Box Office Poison was called “Cave City.” I did about twenty pages and released it as a mini comic. The few reactions I got to it were indifferent, and it totally shot my confidence in the book. So that good part about developing a book in isolation, for the most part, is that I can’t get tripped up by other people’s reactions. I’m very neurotic. The funny part was that I recently reread “Cave City” and think that if I had stuck it out it might’ve developed into something good. Live and learn! I think some stories work better in a serialized format, but I don’t think Tricked would’ve done well, since it has such an odd structure and the characters don’t interact much.
Tricked, like Box Office Poison, is a very character-driven, humanistic book. The art is very solid and pleasing without being too flashy, working to tell the story clearly. It reads very much like a good independent film. Is this intentional? It's not like you have an effects budget to worry about...
I think it’s an example of playing toward my strengths. There are some things I like drawing, like people, and some things I don’t like drawing as much, like backgrounds, and some things I just can’t draw, like cars. Both of my stories take place in urban settings, and there are barely four cars between the two of them! So I’m aware of my limitations as an artist, but it doesn’t bother me too much, usually. There have hardly been any times I felt constrained by it, but maybe there’s a filter in my head that doesn’t let me think of a story I couldn’t draw. I would love to write a story for another artist to draw, so I wouldn’t have to worry about that at all, just to see what I would come up with. I want to do a story that takes place in a parking lot outside a cathedral.
As with Box Office Poison, the response to Tricked has been great. It's a terrific read. How have you taken its reception? I'd be giggling a lot...
Well, as I mentioned, I’m very neurotic. I’m also a pessimist by nature, so I have a hard time accepting good fortune. My wife gets very frustrated, because I don’t read any reviews, good or bad. It just makes me too self-conscious. I’m happy and astonished that the book has sold as well as it has, and that people seem to be enjoying it. See? Even then I said “seem” to be enjoying it, as if I don’t really believe it.
The books read like they’re very personal, which, as many people don't seem to understand, can translate into something universal, familiar bits in the details instead of making everything generic and common denominator. Do you write or draw with any sort of audience in mind other than yourself?
I guess I don’t, but that sounds horrible to say for some reason! When I first started doing the minis after college I did a few stories that were more humor oriented and aside from getting mixed results, I had a hard time doing them. It was then that I decided to try just doing the kind of comic I would want to read. That was when I started Box Office Poison, and I guess it’s been my guideline ever since.
 One of the leads in Tricked is a musician, and though I don't know much about the industry, it felt authentic in terms of the story. Do you do research for your books? Or is it more fun to make stuff up?
I’d already read a bunch of rock star bios, but I did broaden my scope a bit and read about people I wasn’t necessarily a fan of, just to get a bigger sample. I actually didn’t want to show too much of the music business stuff since I really don’t know much about it and I didn’t want people who did to get mad or taken out of the story by something totally off the wall. I tried to learn what I needed for the story. I go back and forth on the research thing. I didn’t read anything about the baseball card collectibles industry, for instance.
Do you work listening to music or with a television on? If so, what's good background noise?
I don’t listen to anything while I write, but I’ll usually have the TV on while I draw. I usually put on a DVD, or occasionally I’ll listen to music. My wife bought me an iPod when I finished Tricked, and that’s totally rekindled my waning interest in music.
Which part of the creative process is more important or rewarding to you: writing or drawing? Do you have interest in drawing someone else's words much as you mentioned writing a story for another artist?
I do think of myself as a writer who draws rather than an artist who writes. It’s funny because I was on a panel one time with two other Top Shelf cartoonists and got a question along these along these lines. The other two artists said they thought they were better artists than writers, and when I said the opposite—that I was better at writing than drawing—everyone acted as if I was bragging somehow, and got mildly hostile. It wasn’t that big a deal, but I thought it was interesting. Maybe a lot of artists aren’t as secure in their writing so to have someone say something like that makes them self-conscious. But everyone who knows me knows I’m not one to boast. It wasn’t like I was saying I was a brilliant writer, just that I wrote better than I drew—which isn’t that hard!
What comic or graphic novel have you discovered out there that people should take a look at? (Other than Box Office Poison and Tricked, which, honestly, everyone should check out-- good stuff. Not kissing ass, just being honest.)
I can’t think of too much offhand. I don’t read nearly as many comics as I used to since I lost my 40% discount at my local shop! That being said, I really enjoyed Street Angel, which isn’t new, I guess. Top Shelf is going to be releasing Tony Consiglio’s new graphic novel Mofo 110% this Spring, which is a great book and big step forward for him. One semi-obscure book I always recommend is Terry LaBan’s Unsupervised Existence which came out in the early ‘90s from Fantagraphics. That book was a big influence on Box Office Poison. I read an interview with LaBan at the time, and he was very negative and pessimistic about the industry, which really depressed me. Now I find out he was 100% right!
It's almost unfair to ask this, as you've completed a huge book and all, but what're you working on now?
I don’t think that’s unfair to ask. When Tricked debuted at San Diego, the very next day someone told me they read it and asked me what I was working on now. It’s a flattering question, of course, since it means people care—or at least pretend to for the sake on conversation. The honest truth is that while I’m kicking around several ideas and think I have an idea that I might be ready to turn into a concept, I’m not ready to go public on anything yet. The only thing I definitely want is for the book to be shorter. I’m hoping it will be about 150 or 200 pages, but we’ll see. Someone asked James Michener (who mostly wrote bulky, epic novels) what it’s like to sit down and start a 1,500-page book. His reply was that he doesn’t sit down to write a 1,500-page book--he sits down to write a 200 page book, but by the time he realizes it’s becoming a 1,500 page book it’s too late to give up. So we’ll see…
To keep up-to-date on the fine, fine work of Alex Robinson, click on over to Alex Robinson’s Comic Book Cavalcade!
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