INTERVIEW CORNER #64: Alex Robinson

6 Comments Written by Θωμάς Παπαδημητρόπουλος on October 18th, 2011 – 08:20

Η επιτυχία είναι, οπωσδήποτε, πάντα καλοδεχούμενη, ωστόσο, μπορεί σε αρκετές περιπτώσεις να μετατραπεί σε δίκοπο μαχαίρι. Ο καλλιτέχνης που θα ολοκληρώσει ένα επιτυχημένο έργο (στην περίπτωση που μας ενδιαφέρει, ένα επιτυχημένο comic), θα δρέψει τις δάφνες της επιτυχίας του, αλλά το κοινό θα είναι πολύ πιο αυστηρό μαζί του, στην επόμενη δουλειά του. Και ο ίδιος θα το γνωρίζει αυτό, με κίνδυνο είτε να πέσει στην επιτυχία της επανάληψης, είτε να επηρεαστεί αρνητικά από την πίεση.

Ο καλεσμένος αυτής της εβδομάδας, όμως, ο Alex Robinson, μοιάζει να έχει ξεφύγει αλώβητος από τις παγίδες της επιτυχίας, για σχεδόν δύο δεκαετίες. Η εν λόγω επιτυχία ήρθε με το πρώτο του κιόλας “επαγγελματικό” comic, BOX OFFICE POISON. Το συγκεκριμένο comic ξεκίνησε να εκδίδεται σε συνέχειες, το 1996, από την Antarctic Press και συγκεντρώθηκε σε έναν τόμο από την Top Shelf (ο οποίος έκλεισε πριν μερικές ημέρες 10 χρόνια κυκλοφορίας). Στις σελίδες του, ο Robinson αναπτύσσει με μαεστρία τους χαρακτήρες του μεγάλου cast και διατηρεί αμείωτο το ενδιαφέρον του αναγνώστη, με μια ιστορία γοητευτική από άποψης ενδιαφέροντος, αλλά και τεχνικής. Αν και δεν κατάφερε να βραβευτεί, το BOX OFFICE POISON υπήρξε υποψήφιο για μια πλειάδα βραβείων (Harvey, Eisner, Ignatz και Firecracker).

Ακολούθησε το δεύτερο, ιδιαίτερα δύσκολο λόγω της επιτυχίας αυτού που προηγήθηκε, comic του Robinson, το TRICKED. Σε αυτό, ο δημιουργός ξέφυγε από τις προηγούμενες φόρμες του και απέφυγε, σε μεγάλο βαθμό, τον σκόπελο της επανάληψης. Αυτή τη φορά, το comic του Robinson κέρδισε ένα Harvey και ένα Ignatz, ενώ ήταν υποψήφιο και για Eisner Award.

Ακολούθησαν, τα επόμενα χρόνια, τρία ακόμη έργα του δημιουργού, τα οποία μπορεί να μην αποδείχθηκαν το ίδιο επιτυχημένα, ωστόσο, διατήρησαν σταθερή την τροχιά του Robinson γύρω από την επιτυχία. Το LOWER REGIONS, ένα comic που ασχολείται με D&D κόσμους και μοιάζει να αποτέλεσε το αγχολυτικό του δημιουργού, το TOO COOL TO BE FORGOTTEN, το οποίο κέρδισε επίσης ένα Harvey και το A KIDNAPPED SANTA CLAUS, μια μεταφορά του ομότιτλου διηγήματος του L. Frank Baum. Επιπλέον, συμμετείχε πέρσι στο δεύτερο volume του STRANGE TALES της Marvel.

Λίγο πιο πρόσφατα, τέλος, ο Robinson επιχείρησε να συνεχίσει τις ιστορίες των πρωταγωνιστών του BOX OFFICE POISON, με ένα mini comic που κυκλοφόρησε πριν μερικούς μήνες, ενώ η Top Shelf ανακοίνωσε ότι το TOO COOL TO BE FORGOTTEN θα μεταφερθεί σύντομα στον κινηματογράφο.

Όπως φαίνεται, λοιπόν, ο καλεσμένος αυτής της εβδομάδας, Alex Robinson, αποφεύγει τόσο καιρό τις παγίδες που κρύβει η επιτυχία – και χωρίς μεγάλη προσπάθεια, όπως φαίνεται. Διαβάστε, λοιπόν, τη συνέντευξη που ακολουθεί, ώστε να μάθετε πώς κατάφερε κάτι τέτοιο, αλλά και τι ετοιμάζει για το μέλλον:

Do you miss BOX OFFICE POISON’s serialized format or do you prefer writing complete stories in graphic novels?
I do miss it, since it was nice having something new out every few months. There are advantages to having a story come out in one big chunk — you can pace it in such a way where you don’t have to grab the reader in the first 20 pages, the reader will get the complete story, etc — but there’s something appealing about releasing it in pieces. For one thing, it forces the reader to slow down and digest the story, rather than just barrel through it. I’ve had a new graphic novel which took me years to create come out and people will tell me they read the entire thing within a day.
The serialized magazine format is pretty much extinct when it comes to alternative comics, but I’m exploring the idea of releasing my next book in a digital serialized format. We’ll see.

I can’t imagine a writer who’s writing Superman or Spider-Man relating totally to his main character, but how about someone who writes about everyday people? In what extent do you relate to your characters?
I think a good writer can identify with any character he or she creates. It seems that if you want your characters to have any kind of dimension you have to be able to think like them and get inside their skin, even if they’re different from you or have moral beliefs you may find repugnant. As a writer you have to convincingly “play” many different roles. I imagine that even good superhero writers can tap into what makes Superman and Spider-Man tick, but if they don’t it probably has less to do with their superpowers and more to do with the fact that they’re owned by corporations rather than the author. Superman is limited in what he can truly do (ironically) since DC is not going to have him do anything which would ruin his value as a commercial property. I think that’s a bigger challenge to a writer: in a traditional story the main character is somehow changed by events of the story, but Superman can never change.

Do you use autobiographical elements in your comics?
To varying degrees. On the most obvious, surface level something interesting or funny will happen to me and I’ll mentally file the anecdote away to use in a story someday. At the deepest level, I think all my stories are autobiographical in the sense that I’m using them to explore ideas that are important to me. I think when I was younger, like with BOX OFFICE POISON, the stories were more overtly autobiographical, though I would kind of split myself into many characters. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve kind of filtered and disguised the autobiographical material so it’s hopefully not as obvious, but I think most first novels tend to be veiled autobiography since, by definition, young authors don’t have much else to draw on.

How difficult is it to stay focused and write all the things you have in mind, in a story with many lead characters, like BOX OFFICE POISON or TRICKED?
It has it’s challenges but overall I don’t think it’s that difficult. If anything, my last book, TOO COOL TO BE FORGOTTEN, only had one main character who was in every scene and I found that to be much harder than my other books. The good part about having a large cast is that there’s always another character or subplot to go to is you become stuck or bored with a particular story line, or if the reader doesn’t especially like one character they know that someone else will be coming on in a few pages.
TRICKED was unusual in that I gave myself a very rigid structure to work with: each chapter focused on one of the six main characters. It was very difficult without having the freedom to cut away to other characters, and I couldn’t introduce anything that didn’t involve one of the six principal characters. When I got to the last chapter, in which they were all together and I could just let the story flow where it wanted, it was like I was finally able to exhale after holding my breath for 200 pages. I’m glad I had the discipline to stick to the structure but it was challenging.

You frequently use pop culture references or song lyrics in your comics. What do they offer to the reader?
I didn’t realize the extent of it until BOX OFFICE POISON was translated into Spanish and the translator sent me a list of questions, mostly pertaining to arcane bits of American pop culture. I was pretty embarrassed, since I didn’t know how much of a crutch it had become. As a result, when I did TRICKED, I resolved not to use any real pop culture in it. Every single band, movie, TV show, etc, was fictional. With TOO COOL… I had to use pop culture to emphasize that it took place in the 1980s.
Pops cultural references can come in handy, as a kind of shorthand to quickly know a character, but it’s not without its problems. Part of the reason they work is that it can make the audience feel smart and in-on-the-joke. “Hey, I remember that old TV show, too!” but it can also be used by lazy writers to add some color to an otherwise dull character or scene. You’re counting on the reader getting that momentary charge. The biggest problem with pop cultural references is how they hold up over time (or in the case of foreign translations, across cultures). For instance, in BOX OFFICE POISON I refer to Anna Nicole Smith who — way back in 1997, when I was working on the book — was a buxom jeans model. A few years later she had a reality show and had become a bloated drug addict and a joke, completely changing the context of my original reference. A few years after that she died of a drug overdose, adding a sadness to the whole thing. And, of course, most pop cultural things are just plain forgotten over time, so what might’ve been a well-crafted reference becomes meaningless after a few years. If writing BOX OFFICE POISON today I would not include a reference to the Spice Girls.

BOX OFFICE POISON was briefly continued in a mini-comic. Can you tell us more about it?
Well, being continued might be overstating it. In 2010 I was going through a very bad case of writer’s block in which none of the ideas I had were able to maintain my interest. At one point I considered the idea of working on a sequel to BOX OFFICE POISON. It’s my most popular book and I was curious if I could take the same characters that were important to me in my twenties and see if I could use them to address things that are important to me now. By the time I completed what was going to be the first chapter, featuring Sherman, I had lost interest and abandoned the project. So I took that one chapter and released it as a mini-comic, with the gimmick of pretending that the original series had never ended. But other than that one comic I never did any more stories with the cast and don’t have any plans to do so in the foreseeable future.
I’m very gratified that people still enjoy BOX OFFICE POISON and are still discovering it all these years later, but I found that I didn’t have anything new to say about the characters. It was better to start with a brand new cast, without the baggage and expectations.

TOO COOL TO BE FORGOTTEN was optioned for a movie. Are there any news from that front?
Nothing I can really share. The wheels of Hollywood grind very slowly sometimes and while things are progressing there’s nothing concrete yet. It’s funny because I’ve always been very indifferent to anyone adapting my books but now that this one is getting closer to actually getting made — farther than any of my other books, anyway — I find myself getting more eager for it to happen. It’s not that I think it will be a great movie but it seems like it will be an interesting experience. My feeling has always been that the books are the way I want to tell these stories. As long as the original books are my versions, I’m open to moviemakers tinkering around and changing what they want.

What were the challenges in adapting A KIDNAPPED SANTA CLAUS in comic format?
It wasn’t difficult, and I enjoyed the experience. Baum’s original story is very simple, almost skeletal, in that it pretty much just described the plot with very little characterization. So I essentially got to build the characters from scratch, which I liked. It was also interesting creating a comic aimed at kids, since my books have always dealt with more mature subject matter.

Has the success of your previous books and all the awards and nominations you received, changed the way you make comics? Is it harder or easier now?
It has its pros and cons. Any kind of success means more pressure, even if that pressure only comes from within. So when I start a new book I have to sort of take myself back to a time before anyone knew who I was, to get to that state of mind where you’re doing comics because you love them. I called my first book BOX OFFICE POISON because I honestly thought it would flop. It’s a way of taking that pressure off, that pressure to create a masterpiece and just have fun telling the kind of story I would want to read.
On the other hand, it does feel great knowing the previous books have succeeded and I’ve probably built up a little bit of confidence that I know what I’m doing. It does become harder, because comics take a lot of work and I’ve just slowed down as I get older. When I look at BOX OFFICE POISON now, I see a very enthusiastic kid eager to try every storytelling trick and play with every toy in the comics sandbox. Now I’m a bit more self-conscious and it doesn’t come as easily. It’s like anything, I guess. You don’t want to repeat yourself, at least not too much. Looking back, I can see how in every book after BOX OFFICE POISON I gave myself formal challenges to try and make the books different: TRICKED is much more tightly structured, and TOO COOL… focuses on one character instead of an ensemble.

Are there any projects you’re working on now? Can you tell us anything about them?
It’s kind of ironic since I just talked about not wanting to repeat myself but I’ve just started working on a new book that kind of reminds me of BOX OFFICE POISON (though not with those characters). In the way that that book focused on things that were important to me in my 20s — relationships, building a career, entering adulthood — I wanted to do a book about the things I think about now — getting older, family, long term friendships. So far I’m very excited about it. Unfortunately, I don’t imagine it will be completed until 2013 or so. I try not to think about how far away that is!