Four years. That's how long it's been since Alex Robinson concluded his comics magnum opus Box Office Poison and began working on what would eventually become Tricked, his second gigantic graphic novel. Four years. And Tricked is more than worth the wait. At 350 pages, it's a little over half the size of Box Office Poison, but it still has plenty of room for what Robinson does best, which is creating a terrific ensemble cast and telling a variety of disparate narratives that either weave in and out of each other or miss each other by narrow margins until the big climactic event brings most of the major characters together in the same place for an event that will change them all. The obvious question is, "what is Tricked about?" The answer is less obvious, and ranges from "love, obsession, fame, secrets and choices" to "a washed-up superstar finds inspiration in a new love, a young woman finds herself torn between two loves, a gay couple deals with the bombshell from one of the partners' past lives, a daughter seeks out her father, a husband dabbles in extramarital affairs and light forgery and a kook becomes dangerously obsessed with a famous rockstar" to "it's about 350 pages." However you define Tricked, however, one thing is for sure: It's another terrific comic book performance by Alex Robinson.
Truthfully, I didn't know what to expect from Tricked. Would it be along the lines of Box Office Poison, or would it be something completely different? Tricked does have a fair amount in common with Box Office Poison, as it turns out. The only shared character is Caprice, briefly the object of Sherman's affections in BOP, but the expansive ensemble cast and the ability to focus on reasonably normal day-to-day existence and yet make for compelling reading are two of the most notable features that recur in Tricked. In addition, Robinson has the ability to take stories that are basically unrelated and tie them together by means of coincidence, applying the "six degrees of separation" rule very effectively so that eventually, all of these characters touch each others' lives, in one way or another. It's a type of storytelling very often seen in independent film, but rarely seen in comics, which tends to follow a more focused narrative.
In many ways, Tricked is not one story, but in fact a half dozen. Caprice's struggle to decide between a nice guy who occasionally bores her and a guy who is clearly bad for her but more exciting is one. The story of Nick, the faithless husband and autograph forger who is one of Caprice's beaus, is another. The rocky relationship of Frank, Richard and Zoe is yet another. The story of Ray and Lily is arguably the center story, as it's the most clear cut romance as well as the clearest link to the title (Ray's band was "The Tricks"), but they really aren't given that much more "screen time" than the others, and the story of Steve, the obsessive and disturbed Tricks fan, ties pretty closely into their tale at any rate. Actually, there are a number of links that tie these stories together into what becomes essentially two narratives, the story of Ray and his circle and the story of Caprice and hers.
Tricked unfolds at a deliberate pace and, thanks to a couple of narrative tricks by Robinson, manages to keep the reader pushing forward, desperate to see what happens next and held in suspense about where the story might be going. It doesn't take long before we start to see violence and danger creep into the stories of Nick and Steve, and by the time I was about halfway through the book, I knew that one or more of these characters was probably going to suffer or maybe even die. And I didn't really want any of them to go, because Robinson fleshes them out into interesting, believable people, if not all entirely likable people. When the violence does erupt on the page, it feels more brutal and real, because it takes place in a world that is recognizable as our own, with echoes to our own daily lives.
Robinson's plotting is impressive, and I love the way he weaves the stories together, but really, the plot could go nowhere and I'd still love Tricked, because Robinson just knows how to write characters. There are any number of memorable, fun relationship moments with Caprice and Boyd, Richard and Frank, Caprice and Nick and Ray and Lily, as well as more somber but equally memorable moments for all of them. The slow degradation of Steve's thought patterns into schizophrenic paranoia are also disturbing well-catalogued, such that we can get inside his head and see what he's thinking, even while we know that he's crazy. The description of schizophrenia as being on fire, when everyone is telling you that it's all in your head, is particularly effective and striking.
In addition to being a talented writer, Robinson is a very talented artist. His characters are recognizably his, but despite having a stylistic similarity, they're all easily distinguished as well. Each character carries a lot of their personality in their very design, whether it's Caprice's overweight yet sexy look that paints her as kind and a little shy, unaware of all that she has to offer, the shrinking violet shyness inherent in Zoe's skinny frame, the manic intensity of Steve, the suave exterior mixed with a little bit of unsure little boy Ray... each character has their base character set before they've even spoken a word. In addition, Robinson is a great storyteller, and I love the little design touches he uses in the chapter breaks, whether it's a single illustration on a mostly blank page, the Eisner-esque incorporation of chapter numbers into the backgrounds of some chapters, the occasional floating panel arrangments or the splash pages broken up into separate chunks by panel breaks within the splash.
Note: This comic has not yet been released, but should be available in comic shops soon.
