Alex Robinson

Among the first. When I was in high school I did superhero stories but it definitely would be among the first of my mature so called professional life.

Yeah, someone else colors it.

Yeah. I usually work in black and white so it’s always exciting to see it in color. I wish I could afford to do color comics but not yet.

It’s been doing surprisingly well. The first printing is pretty much sold out and Top Shelf is going to do another printing before the end of the year. So I’m very excited about that. I was very nervous about it because when I work on something for four years with very little feedback, it lets my neuroses build up and I’m like “This book is going to tank. Everyone’s going to hate it.” I’m excited and relieved that it’s done as well as it has.

Yeah, Box Office Poison was the first thing I worked on after graduating from college and I think the book shows that it was a learning process. I can’t even look at the early drawings. They just make wince at how crude they are. Tricked was definitely a more mature book in that respect. Some people like the first one better so I guess it’s just a matter of taste.

That’s what I was nervous about. Some people have been disappointed that the second book isn’t just Box Office Poison Two.

To my face most people have been very nice. No one has told me to my face that they didn’t like it as much as the first one. But I did get an email from someone who said they liked the new book except for the fact that they didn’t like the characters, they thought the plot was dumb and they thought it was anticlimactic. It was a long laundry list of things they did not like about it, which makes me wonder if they liked anything about it. Her criticism basically seemed based on comparing it to Box Office Poison. That’s pretty much the only person who has said they really wanted a sequel or at least something similar in tone to the first one.

That’s true. When I did Box Office Poison I had at least two characters who were cartoonists and I realized that was probably too much. I’m never going to do any comics related stories again because it just got too incestuous.

That’s a risky thing because you can sort of wind up being like Joe Matt and Peepshow. You can wind up doing comics about doing autobiographical stories and next thing you know you’re going to do comics about doing comics about autobiography. It’s swallowing your own tail. I was just trying to move away from the blatantly autobiographical stuff. My life is actually very boring. I sit around drawing comic books. There’s nothing going on.

So is he going back to comics now? Has the HBO thing fallen through?

I read that Dave Sim interviewed him and it sounded like it was not happening and he was definitely expressing frustration about it.

Originally one story I had in mind was a rock star taking on an assistant. It was going to be much more John Lennon influenced with examining the difference between the public persona and the private. Then I just gradually moved away from it. The idea of a rock star struggling with coming out with a new album was easy to do because I was struggling with what to do with my second book. Not to compare myself to a rock star but I guess there is a part of me that thinks that I’m this big shot cartoonist guy. But there’s also another character in the book who’s a crazy delusional person, which I think also applies to myself. They’re both different aspects of the way I see myself or at least the way parts of me see myself.

Hopefully I disguised it enough where people aren’t going to be like, “Oh my god. Is this how he sees himself? That he’s this big star?”

I imagine anyone who has any level of success and has people asking about what they’re doing next makes you always feel that pressure from within and from people who like your work. That’s whether it’s a moderately selling comic book or a multi platinum selling album.

I can’t imagine creating a character that I wouldn’t have any identification with because without that connection on some level the character would just ring false. I think even if you’re doing a story with Hitler as a character, some part of you has to identify with him. I guess the better writer you are, the better you are at disguising it but I can’t imagine you could entirely separate yourself from the characters.

As sad as it to say about talk shows like Jerry Springer or Montel Williams, they do reflect a certain amount of reality. But it is not like I was watching Maury Povich and said, “That would be a good story.” I think the reason those shows are successful is because they exploit the same situations that a lot of people are in. Everyone has their own weird family situations.

She says she loves the book. But I’m paranoid enough where I don’t believe anyone when they tell me they like the book, especially my wife. What’s she going to say, “You know, I really didn’t like it.” How would we live together after that? Even if she didn’t like the book I imagine she would have to say she liked the book to preserve our marital sanctity.

I think she read bits and pieces of it while I was working on it, but it wasn’t until the very end that she read the whole thing tip to tail. She helps me proofread it and stuff, but other than that she doesn’t really give any kind of editorial interference. She’ll tell me “I didn’t understand what was going on here” and I’ll dismiss it and say “No. It works.”

When I was starting the book, he said, “Well, every time you finish a chapter send it to me and I’ll tell you if there’s any problems with it.” But that didn’t last too long. I generally don’t do well under close supervision. I resist that. When I finished the book I sent it to him and he read it. Aside from 15,000 typographical errors, he questioned a couple of scenes but he also told me I was completely free to ignore any advice, which I definitely appreciated. Not that I ignored all his advice, but that he was willing to say that. Some of the changes I took and some I felt free to ignore.

It took awhile to get used to because without a bi-monthly or quarterly deadline it was very easy to let it slip by and spend the whole day playing Zoo Tycoon. Next thing you know I’m doing two pages a week and I’m really falling behind schedule. Towards the end I was doing like a page a day for two or three months. It was exciting but it was also very grueling to be working at that pace.

Fairly early on I knew what was going to happen at the end of the book. It pretty much stayed true to that. There might have been some minor changes, but I pretty much wrote it knowing it was going to end that way. It got hard towards the end because I had to make sure all the characters were in the right places in their own storylines before they could get to the end. I don’t write anything out ahead of time so I just know in my head how it’s going to end. But I don’t sit down and write out the whole book before I start drawing. I can be two thirds of the way through the book and be like “Oh my gosh. I still have to get to this and this before I get to the end.”

I don’t remember ever being stalked by anyone. I don’t think my readers care that much about me.

Well the amount of people that go to comic conventions is actually relatively small. You do see the same people over and over again but I’ve never been bothered by anyone who has ever done anything outside of the acceptable behavior at conventions. It’s sort an insult in a way.

I’m not talking like the girl from My Sister Sam or anything but a little minor harassment would be flattering.

There have been some nibbles but nothing substantial. I would love for it to happen. I think it actually has a much better chance of being adapted than Box Office Poison did because it’s a tighter, shorter work.

I actually was toying with doing a story set ten years after the very end of Box Office Poison, so it would be ten years after the epilogue portion, which was ten years after the bulk of the book. I sort of know what happens to all the characters but I can’t think of any excuse for them to all get together. That’s why it would be hard to do any kind of sequel. By the end of the book they’ve all drifted apart.

I mentioned that idea and someone goes, “Oh just like in The Big Chill.” So maybe it is cliché, but I don’t know. I could do a wedding and make it a happier occasion.

I’m a big baby when it comes to doing that stuff because I want people to ask me to contribute to books. I’m a very poor hustler for my own work. I never say, “Hey. How can I get in on that project?” Unless someone specifically asks me to contribute to an anthology or something I generally will not because I’m afraid of being rejected.

I definitely grew up reading them. But there are very few superhero comics I read now. I guess for any cartoonist there’s a certain nostalgic appeal about drawing characters that you grew up on, even dumb superhero characters. I was approached by Marvel and DC about writing some stuff, but I found I’m not a good pitch person. Until I sit down with characters and start writing, exploring and playing around with them, I can’t really think of anything particularly interesting to do that I haven’t seen John Byrne do a 1000 times.

No I haven’t. Like I said my readers generally do not seem to care that much where they would stalk me or mark their body with tattoos. Some woman came up to me eight months pregnant and me to draw a picture on her stomach. That was probably as close as I’ve gotten to a tattoo.

It was especially weird because that woman goes to conventions fairly regularly so I signed her belly while she was pregnant and now she has like a five year old child walking around. It’s very strange to think about that.

I have some ideas I’m kicking around. The analogy I like to use is that it’s like being in a relationship. I just got out of a long-term relationship with Tricked so I want to play the field a bit before I settle down again. I want to try out different ideas and see what I like before I decide what book I’m going to do for five years. When you finish a big book like that, you have to give yourself time to forget how exhausting it can be so you can actually do it again. If I jumped right into another book I think I’d go crazy.

It really depends. Top Shelf has said they’re open to the possibility of serialization especially if it’ll make me work faster. But it really depends on the story. Looking back I think Tricked actually worked better as a one shot book because I don’t know if it would’ve grabbed people with just reading a 20-page chunk.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck