Box Office Poison
-
- $14.99
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Eisner Award for Talent Deserving Wider Recognition, the International Comics Festival Award for Best Debut Graphic Novel (Angouleme, France), and voted by Wizard Magazine as the best indy graphic novel of all time.
"A convincing, absorbing and satisfying fictional portrait of post-college life in New York City."
—Publishers Weekly
"A salute to comics, an exploration of the human condition, and a solid, absorbing, and riotously snide tale about at least half of the things that make life important."
—Tasha Robinson, The AV Club
"Box Office Poison is to the comic book culture as Almost Famous is to that of rock and roll."
—Chris Tamarri, The Daily Targum
This epic story of Sherman, Dorothy, Ed, Stephen, Jane, and Mr. Flavor is a true comics masterpiece. Alex Robinson's completely natural and inspiring knack for dialogue makes this story of dreary jobs, comic books, love, sex, messy apartments, girlfriends (and the lack thereof), undisclosed pasts, and crusty old professionals one of the most delightful and whimsical graphic novels to hit the stands in years.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Winner of an Eisner award, Robinson's first book is a graphic novel whose very size qualifies it as epic. Luckily, the story involves more detail than density. Like any good novel, it is preoccupied with character specifically, the ways in which people and relationships evolve over time. Much like Michael Chabon in Kavalier & Clay, Robinson uses the comics industry especially the "golden age" (the beginnings of the comic book industry in the late 1930s) as a platform from which to explore both his characters and the prevailing culture. The main personages include Sherman, a wannabe writer stuck in a dead-end bookstore job, and his college pal Ed, a budding comic book artist still looking to get laid for the first time. There are also Jane and Stephen, Sherman's negligent Brooklyn housemates; Dorothy, Sherman's hard-drinking, chain-smoking, misanthropic girlfriend; and Irving Flavor, a crusty septuagenarian and veteran graphic novelist, who was forced to signed away the rights to a popular (and lucrative) superhero character he created back in the golden age of comics. Drawn in a cartoonish but nuanced graphic style that manages to balance both hilarity and emotional depth, the characters come to life in a series of interconnected chapters that cut back and forth in time. This novel supplies both visual wit and dramatic honesty, from the slow dissolution of trust between Sherman and Dorothy to Flavor's na ve betrayal of Ed late in the story. This is a convincing, absorbing and satisfying fictional portrait of post-college life in mid-1990s New York City.
Customer Reviews
genius!
Alex Robinson is a master at his craft! This graphic novel takes you on a journey that will hit home. I'll keep this short and sweet just do yourself a favor and read this graphic novel!