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Alex
Robinson—winner of the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz Awards—made
his impact in the world of independent comics with the release
of his long running Box Office Poison, a comic book
series which eventually culminated in a 600-plus page slice-of-life
graphic novel that depicted the lives of a ragtag group of
comic book artists, historians, bookstore clerks, and others
attempting to get by and find fulfillment in New York. Now,
Robinson has produced a new graphic novel, Too Cool to
Be Forgotten, a fine edition to the collections of comic
fans who prefer their protagonists sans spandex.
Too
Cool to Be Forgotten centers on the life of Andy Wicks,
a bald, myopic, middle-aged man who has done his best to quit
smoking—patches, nicotine gum, cold turkey—but the
allure of cigarettes always brings him back to his habit.
Finding himself at a dead end, he takes his wife's advice
to try some "new age mumbo jumbo" in order to help him overcome
his addiction. His doctor puts him under hypnosis and, instead
of finding himself thinking that he is a chicken, finds himself
back in 1985 when he was 15-years old, a time during which
he was a fan of Iron Maiden, had a nice stash of girly magazines,
and was friends with a group of nerdy, marginalized students
who, while not the complete outcasts of the school, were not
among the "social elite."
Realizing
that he has been given a second chance to nip his bad habit
in the bud, Andy decides to turn down the first cigarette
that he will be offered at a party. Not wanting to change
his future dramatically in any other way à la Back
to the Future, Andy limits himself to interacting only
with his old friends, but when the opportunity comes up to
ask a girl whom he has a crush on if she will accompany him
to a party, he can't turn down the opportunity, and slowly
he realizes that there might be other things that he needs
to remedy besides his addiction to cigarettes, such as his
shaky relationship with his younger sister and his lack of
appreciation for all the sacrifices his mother made over the
years.
While
Box Office Poison focuses on a brightly colored canopy
of characters, Too Cool to Be Forgotten is narrated
from the mind of one character, Andy. Through him, Robinson
does a great job of showing how multi-layered one's person-to-person
relations can be and how little one truly knows about his
or her fellow man. However, Robinson also shows a darker side
of personal perspective, showing how an individual's memory
can be quite selective about what it remembers and how the
things that are forgotten or repressed are the things that
truly should be remembered.
Robinson's
artwork is minimal and the character designs are rather simple,
but through them he is able to convey emotion quite well,
such as depictions of Andy's anger which can make the character's
simple design balloon into humorously cartoony proportions.
Fans of Daniel Clowes or Peter Bagge might, however, find
his art renderings to be a bit dull. Where Robinson's art
truly shines is within the beings of his characters. Not one
to make idealized stereotypes of jocks, cheerleaders, and
prototypical nerds in comic form, Robinson's characters suffer
from frizzy hair, pimples, and other traits which truly make
the individuals unique in this imperfect world. His works
are full of the individuals that most of us know and went
to high school with as well.
Too
Cool to Be Forgotten makes for a fun, quick read that
might make the reader shed a tear or two for days now passed.
It can remind the reader of missed opportunities of possible
action and things that could have been said but never were.
(November,
2008)
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