Both intricately weave together the lives of several people. While “Box Office Poison” (BOP, for abbreviation’s sake) is a story of pretty average folks struggling through the daily grind in New York, “Tricked” is a pseudo retelling of the John Lennon story.

Now, Robinson is the creator of two highly regarded comics (“Tricked,” his second effort, is available now) that are sold in bookstores like the one he used to work at. After reading his first graphic novel, “Box Office Poison,” it’s very clear that he didn’t enjoy the job. This is a convincing, absorbing and satisfying fictional portrait of post-college life in mid-1990s New York City.Alex Robinson worked in a big-city bookstore for seven years after graduating from high school in 1987. This novel supplies both visual wit and dramatic honesty, from the slow dissolution of trust between Sherman and Dorothy to Flavor's naïve betrayal of Ed late in the story. Drawn in a cartoonish but nuanced graphic style that manages to balance both hilarity and emotional depth, the characters come to life in a series of interconnected chapters that cut back and forth in time. There are also Jane and Stephen, Sherman's negligent Brooklyn housemates Dorothy, Sherman's hard-drinking, chain-smoking, misanthropic girlfriend and Irving Flavor, a crusty septuagenarian and veteran graphic novelist, who was forced to signed away the rights to a popular (and lucrative) superhero character he created back in the golden age of comics. The main personages include Sherman, a wannabe writer stuck in a dead-end bookstore job, and his college pal Ed, a budding comic book artist still looking to get laid for the first time. Much like Michael Chabon in Kavalier & Clay, Robinson uses the comics industry-especially the 'golden age' (the beginnings of the comic book industry in the late 1930s)-as a platform from which to explore both his characters and the prevailing culture.

Like any good novel, it is preoccupied with character-specifically, the ways in which people and relationships evolve over time. Luckily, the story involves more detail than density. Winner of an Eisner award, Robinson's first book is a graphic novel whose very size qualifies it as epic.

Box office poison alex robinson