So the bitch of being someone with an overactive imagination and a love of certain genres of literature is that sometimes you just can’t put down a good story. Whether it’s an autobiography of a transvestite revolutionary or the six-hour version of Dune on a bootleg videotape, some of the smartest people I know have wasted entire days on getting through a single, enveloping story in one sitting. Me? I just blew four hours reading the new Alex Robinson graphic novel, Tricked. The story follows six characters and their peripherals as they all slowly begin to converge on the singular event they will inevitably share. The chapters descend instead of ascend to the climax of the book. Robinson, for those who’ve never heard the name, wrote the excellent and surprisingly well-paced Box Office Poison and his long-delayed follow-up, just like a musician trying to climb back from a one hit wonder record, has a degree of patience and growth that adds to his still constant grasp of dialogue, emotion, and terrific character studies translated to words and pictures. It’s a good time.
Tricked is 19.99 and is the intimidating size of a small text book, but don’t worry: there’re plenty of pictures. It IS a graphic novel, after all.
Every once in awhile, it feels great to pimp this shit.
I liked Tricked a lot. And Box Office Poison was so yummy, too. Yay for Mr. Robinson.