Box Office Poison is my new favorite example of what a comic book can accomplish that a film or novel cannot. Robinson has the book in short episodes, five or six pages (of 600, for only $30), usually featuring different characters (Poison has six main characters and five or six significant supporting ones). Comic books can offer brief episodes, one stage sometimes--sometimes just conversations. A novel has a lot more responsibilities to the writing--you cannot just have an amusing little scene. Robinson has little breaks, every few stories, with his characters answering questions. Sometimes these questions relate to the story, most times they do not. With these scenes, Robinson establishes his relationship with the reader. He puts his arm around the reader and pulls him or her out--to regard the characters with Robinson. He shares little things with the reader, amusing he’s had about his own characters. These insights, like I said, are not essential, but what Robinson does by having them is put himself in a position to surprise the reader.
There’s no sense of foreboding in Box Office Poison. Famously (at least to me), I checked the ending of Jamie Hernandez’s Locas, because I was so wrapped up with the characters, so wrapped up with their hopes and dreams, I had to see what happened. Just had to. I haven’t cheated my reading experience like that since I was twelve and reading Sue Grafton books. BOP never sets you up to worry about the characters--which is odd, because maybe they don’t come out all right (I can’t spoil it, sorry)--you care about them, sure, but Robinson never presents them as being in danger of making grave mistakes. So, when they do, the reader is faced with reflecting on both the development and on why he or she never cared, never worried. Robinson also--I think this decision was well into the book--changes the story’s main character. The perspective never changes, it’s always third, but the main character--the one who Box Office Poison is really about--seems to change.
I don’t know if Robinson scripted BOP before he drew it or if he just did the stories and let it all gradually fill a complete work (I’m guessing the latter, since he has a collection of short BOP character stories out too). It’s all very layered, very gentle. I’m crazy about this book. My shop owner and I had looked at it, mostly its price (he ended up lending me his personal copy). I read it, all six hundred pages, in a matter of hours. It’s impossible to put down once you get into it. I need to get Robinson’s next book....
