Box Office Poison

AUTHOR: Robinson, Alex

ARTIST: Alex Robinson (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Antarctic Press; Top Shelf Productions

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1996-2000

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2001

Publication History

Box Office Poison was originally published in twenty-one installments of about thirty pages each at Antarctic Press, an independent comic book publisher founded in San Antonio, Texas, specializing in the style known as American manga. Box Office Poison was the first major work to be published by New York author, artist, and School of Visual Arts graduate Alex Robinson. The content of the black-and-white series is loosely based on events and acquaintances from the creator’s life. The episodic format was inspired by the work of Dave Sim in his Cerebus (1977-2004) series, of which Robinson is an avowed admirer.

After initial publication, Box Office Poison was collected into a graphic novel of more than six hundred pages and published by Top Shelf Productions, a comics publisher founded in 1997 in Marietta, Georgia. Since its release, Box Office Poison has been translated into a number of foreign languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, and German, under a variety of titles.

Plot

The plot of Box Office Poison revolves around the lives, loves, and aspirations of a group of interconnected characters in New York City and its environs during the mid-1990’s. The stories are loosely based on Robinson’s experiences as a bookstore employee and hopeful cartoonist struggling to get his work accepted. Most of the major characters are young adults, like the intended audience for the work, and the plot hinges on their typical concerns.

One of the primary plot threads deals with the difficulties of living arrangements. At the beginning of the story, Sherman is looking for an inexpensive dwelling so he can save more of his meager salary. He becomes a roommate in the apartment of lovers Stephen and Jane, which brings him into contact with the irascible, foreign landlady Mrs. Sora Tweed. Sherman also comes in conflict with noisy neighbors who play loud music or have crying babies and barking dogs, and he causes occasional embarrassing complications when romance is in the air.

Meanwhile, Sherman’s best friend, Ed, still lives with his parents and suffers under their control. Sherman’s girlfriend, Dorothy, who sometimes stays with Sherman at his place, maintains her own apartment because when she formerly roomed with Jane and Stephen, Jane grew to hate her for a variety of reasons. Dorothy is reluctant to let Sherman into her apartment because she never does housekeeping chores or cleans up after her untrained dog.

Another plot thread involves the woes of employment. Sherman hates his job at the bookstore, where he has worked for several years. Though he dislikes having to cut his hair and wear a tie and complains constantly about his unfeeling boss and low salary, his main objection is to the people he must serve. There are hilarious examples throughout of the inane questions customers ask: “Do you have books on how to hypnotize girls?” (from a creepy, furtive man); “Are these all the books you have on Norwegian tree frogs?” (from a professorial type).

Sherman, who halfheartedly sends out written pieces and receives rejections, is too insecure to quit, unlike his colleague, James, who abruptly resigns and, without even trying, lands a higher paying position, much to Sherman’s chagrin. On the other hand, Ed works to escape from his stifling job at his father’s store and to improve his opportunities. He interviews with a comic book publisher before becoming an assistant with Golden Age cartoonist Irving Flavor, whom he encourages to seek fair compensation from the publishers profiting from his early creations.

Characters

•Sherman Davies is tall, thin, and blond. A major viewpoint character, he has a tendency to convert amounts of money into the cost of musical compact discs (for example, fifty-six dollars equals five CDs).

•Beatrice Dorothy Lestrade is Sherman’s flaky, needy girlfriend. She goes by her middle name. A short, dark-haired young woman who smokes and drinks too much, she is a writer and assistant editor for Metro-Chic magazine.

•Jane Pekar is slender; has long, dark hair; and wears glasses. A cartoonist, she struggles to get her work published and suffers through numerous rejections. She has been Stephen’s girlfriend for four years and initially turns him down when he asks her to marry him.

•Stephen Gaedel is large, hairy, and menacing, with a full beard and long hair. In his late twenties, he teaches college-level history in the city. Stephen has a secret: As a boy, he was spokesperson for a popular children’s cereal called Brown-e-os.

•Ed Velasquez is a short, flabby, and genial man sporting a goatee and close-cropped hair. He is Sherman’s best friend and former classmate at Hunter. Born in Costa Rica, he has aspirations of becoming a cartoonist and finding a girlfriend.

•Irving Flavor is an old-time cartoonist. He wears toupees and large glasses and is generally cranky. Creator of a popular and profitable cartoon character, the rights of which he sold for a pittance, Irving is relegated to rendering cartoon characters for cereal boxes.

•Greg Davies is Sherman’s father, whom his son will come to resemble, both physically and mentally.

•Hildy Kierkegaard is a large, young, buxom, blond woman who usually wears her hair braided. She and Ed, both painfully shy, are attracted to one another.

Artistic Style

The predominant style of Box Office Poison is loose and “cartoony,” closer to caricature than realistic portraiture. Characters, more “types” than actual people, are always recognizable, even when their features are distorted or exaggerated to suggest strong emotions. Robinson uses simple line drawings (with crosshatching in close-ups to create dimensionality) enhanced by areas of solid black to set off figures or gestures; he also uses sufficient detail to lend visual interest to objects and backgrounds.

Layouts are founded upon two different grid patterns. One, consisting of a series of vertical panels, periodically presents individual characters as though they were responding to particular questions, such as “If you could have brunch with any fictional character, who would it be?” or “If you could change one aspect of your appearance what would it be?” The other regular pattern is of six panels in two columns per page, though Robinson frequently diverges from this form to emphasize particular action, to speed up or slow down time, or simply to explode preconceived expectations. Illustrations range throughout, from full-page spreads to multiple small frames to odd-shaped panels surrounded by white space. For variety, there are pages of typewritten prose so readers can view the type of material the hero is trying to get published.

One interesting technique occasionally employed is overlapping speech balloons during conversations among characters, which reproduces the often fragmentary, interrupted nature of face-to-face human verbal encounters. This technique, while confusing the issue of who is speaking, also rewards patient readers with bits of illuminating dialogue that reveal character.

Themes

One major theme among many in Box Office Poison is the agony of establishing and maintaining relationships among friends, relatives, lovers, and colleagues in a world fraught with issues of trust and betrayal, where the borders between illusion and reality blur. In addition to the major characters, dozens of minor characters are introduced, who are followed for a time then disappear or reappear at the whim of fate, just as in real life. Each has an effect—sometimes large and permanent, sometimes small and temporary—upon those with whom they intersect.

A second significant theme is the author’s recognition of and reverence for the influences of the past. A massive and continuous homage to cultural icons real and imaginary, Box Office Poison contains numerous references to fictional and factual figures. The name of Sherman’s girlfriend, for example, Dorothy Lestrade, suggests both the real Dorothy Parker and the fictional Inspector Lestrade, the foil for Sherlock Holmes; Dorothy also resembles cartoon character Betty Boop. Jane Pekar’s name is an obvious salute to cartoonist Harvey Pekar. Sherman and Stephen watch and call out questions during an episode of Jeopardy! Members of a nightclub band look just like the Beatles. Some of the annoying bookstore customers with whom Sherman must deal are identifiable: a man built along the lines of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle asks about the whereabouts of Sherlock Holmes novels and a character from the Scooby-Doo cartoons panics when she learns a textbook is sold out. Incidental bystanders, passersby, street people, or subway passengers are often suspiciously familiar.

Impact

An excellent example of the modern, angst-ridden comic that blends fantasy and reality, Box Office Poison owes much to Sim’s Cerebus, which demonstrated the power of black-and-white illustrations in detailing lengthy, complicated story lines that are simultaneously serious and humorous. The publication of the graphic novel jump-started the author’s career. In 2003, Robinson produced a sequel for Top Shelf Productions: BOP! More Box Office Poison. In turn, this led to the publication of Tricked (2005), a sophisticated graphic novel that concerns the lives of six unrelated characters whom fate brings together, and which won Harvey and Ignatz awards.

Further works published by Top Shelf have included the superhero fantasy Alex Robinson’s Lower Regions (2007) and the Harvey Award-winning fantasy Too Cool to Be Forgotten (2008). Since mid-2009 Robinson has become extremely influential, particularly among aspiring cartoonists, thanks not only to his outstanding work but also to The Ink Panthers Show. A weekly half-hour humorous podcast featuring Robinson and fellow cartoonist Mike Dawson (and guests such as Tony Consiglio, John Kerschbaum, and Josh Flanagan), The Ink Panthers dispenses useful advice about the craft of comics.

Further Reading

Robinson, Alex. Bop! More Box Office Poison (2003).

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Tricked (2005).

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Too Cool to Be Forgotten (2008)

Bibliography

Frey, Nancy, and Douglas Fisher. Teaching Visual Literacy: Using Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Anime, Cartoons, and More to Develop Comprehension and Thinking Skills. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin Press, 2008.

Sabin, Roger. Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art. London: Phaidon Press, 2001.

Tabachnick, Stephen E. Teaching the Graphic Novel. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2009.

Weiner, Stephen. Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Rise of the Graphic Novel. New York: Nantier Beall Minoustchine, 2003.