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Summary: People you know? Mammoth, entertaining comics novel.
Review: ... The book's format resembles those CEREBUS phonebook collections: a huge mass of black and white comics, with liberal use of heavy blacks for inking effects. Unlike CEREBUS, the focus here is on regular folks living in a contemporary metropolis.I read through this intimidating heap of pages pretty quickly. There's something funny on virtually every page, although there's also tragedy and drama. The book's strong points are the characters and their dialog. A few of the characters seem unlikable, when they're introduced; but by the end of the story, I liked all of them (except the psycho murderer, maybe). At the end, I felt relieved for some and sad for others. Those I liked best at the beginning weren't in all cases the ones I liked best near the end. It's a book that makes you think hard about people you know or knew, and about how you yourself appear to other people. An impressive accomplishment, I think.
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Summary: My life in a comic book....
Review: ...or rather snippets of it randomly scattered along 608 pages. Once you've read this i promise it'll hit a nerve. It was soooo captivating i ended up calling sick at work! Alex Robinson's a real genius! I heartfully recommend this to anyone who still think comic books are just for kids!
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Summary: Decisions, Decisions ...
Review: A lot of people who are browsing past this graphic novel might think its just another Gen-X treatise on bad relationships. It's not. Alex Robinson has crafted a cast of characters with depth, using "comic" approaches to draw out each of their inner fears, desires and concerns. Some 600+ pages later, you're moved by each of the stories, and thinking about how you've become what you've become since you left home. There are key moments in our lives, very small and quick, that define who we are for years to come. "Box Office Poison" is a stark reminder that, as with the case of poor Sherman Davies, sometimes we make mistakes, and sometimes our mistakes make us.
Rating:
Summary: Decisions, Decisions ...
Review: A lot of people who are browsing past this graphic novel might think its just another Gen-X treatise on bad relationships. It's not. Alex Robinson has crafted a cast of characters with depth, using "comic" approaches to draw out each of their inner fears, desires and concerns. Some 600+ pages later, you're moved by each of the stories, and thinking about how you've become what you've become since you left home. There are key moments in our lives, very small and quick, that define who we are for years to come. "Box Office Poison" is a stark reminder that, as with the case of poor Sherman Davies, sometimes we make mistakes, and sometimes our mistakes make us.
Rating:
Summary: A great example of the "Day in the Life" genre.
Review: At 602 pages, Box Office Poison may seem like a big reading project to tackle, but once you start reading, you'll find that the pages just fly by and that time passes in leaps and bounds. This book follows the lives of a variety of characters, most of them in some way related to or otherwise attached to the lives of our hero, Sherman Davies. Sherman is a 23-year-old aspiring writer living in Brooklyn. To support his aspirations, he works at Matthew's Bookstore, a job he despises but is unwilling to leave for any number of reasons. While learning about Sherman's life, you are introduced to any number of people, including his girlfriend (Dorothy: slob, editor, possible alcoholic, vaguely mentally unbalanced), his roommates (Jane: comic book artist,
long-time significant other of Sherman's other roommate, Stephen: history professor and nut), his best friend (Ed: aspiring comic book artist, virgin, assistant to cartoonist Irving Flavor: crotchety old man, down-on-his-luck cartoonist), and innumerable other characters, big and small. While Box Office Poision is one linear story, it is told in a series of vignettes, each embodying some small part of the overall story arc. I am particularly fond of the "question pages" where a single question (What was your worst job ever? What is your secret talent?) is asked, and various characters respond in a single panel. The sub-division of the story facilitates the speed of the read and leaves you constantly wondering what happened next. I very much enjoyed this format. As for the story itself? It's great. With the wide cast of characters, most anyone can find someone to relate to, made all the more easy by the fact that most of the characters are very real. We've all known an Ed, or a Stephen, or a Dorothy. Maybe not in those exact incarnations, but certainly close enough to provide a deeper level of understand to the whole saga. The story takes a rather up-front view to most of the topics it covers: love, break-ups, sex, jobs, friendships, contracts, alcohol, infidelity, obsessions, and more. Box Office Poison is definitely worth reading, and I think that I'm going to find that it's worth even more: a re-read. It's easy to get lost in something the size of this work, and part of the joy of something like that is that you can go back and reread and find things you missed the first time. I'm looking forward to it.
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Summary: Reality may bite, but it's fun to read
Review: Box Office Poison is a consistently good book. Robinson's iconic art is distinctive. While the work was originally published serially, this collection showcases that it was a holistic story all along. There is good continuity and interplay among the various characters. The main character, Sherman, is usually an unlikeable jerk with an ever-more-horrible girlfriend named Dorothy. These unsympathetic characters aren't a deterrent, though. Watching their drama unfold is strangely satisfying, because in this fictional world, most people get what's coming to them, bad and good. The supporting characters are engaging and provide an entertaining counterpoint to the drama of Sherman and Dorothy, resulting in a well balanced and entertaining book.
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Summary: Best reality comic book ever
Review: Fans of sophisticated b&w comics like Pekar's American Splendor or Sim's Cerebus books should grab this one immediately. At once densely textured and finely nuanced, BoP is an amazing work. Imagine a kind of blue-collar Friends with real people (not Hollywood stars and starlets) with real incomes (low) and real jobs (mostly unsatisfying) and real dreams (mostly unrealized). Now blend in the everyday insecurities and neuroses that we all cope with and mix well. The result is startling in its sense of being real and honest beyond even most contemporary literature. BoP covers the gamut of modern urban life - dullness and drudgery and loneliness warring with ambition and hope and longing. By the end of the book, I really felt for each of the characters, even the "bad" ones like Dorothy and Flavor. In fact, part of Alex's gift is that you learn to understand that we are all human and all imperfect. In some, those imperfections prevent people from becoming the best they could be. And BoP depicts this heartbreaking reality all too well. A fantastic and touching work that will warrant many readings.
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Summary: Eisner Award Winner!
Review: For those who don't know, Alex Robinson recently won the Eisner Award for "Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition." Pick up his epic "Box Office Poison" to see what all the fuss is about!
Rating:
Summary: Simply great
Review: Forget Strangers in Paradise, with its The Bold And The Beautiful-like sappiness, and buy this mammoth collection of the most exhilarating "true life" comics to have surfaced since... owww, I dunno. Box Office Poison is likely to make you cry and laugh out aloud, possibly at the same time. Disturbingly real, sarcastic yet not cynical, absolutely unmissable.
Rating:
Summary: Publisher's Weekly year in books 2001
Review: Here is a great testament to the value of this graphic novel:
Box Office Poison Alex Robinson (Top Shelf)
An ebullient, character-driven graphic novel preoccupied with the nature of people and their relationships over time, this manages to be both funny and emotionally honest. As in Michael Chabon's Kavalier & Clay, the beginnings of the comics industry in the 1930s serves as a platform for a fictional portrait of life in New York City.
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