The Final ’90s Countdown: Part Five.
Continuing alphabetically through the single-vote receivers from the Final ’90s Countdown poll…and as a reminder, there ain’t no shame in a single vote here, just a reaffirming of the wide range of good material available during that decade!
Box Office Poison (Antarctic Press, 1996-2000)
Look, so when I was processing the image file for this entry, I kept naming it “Box Office Potion,” and frankly, all I can say is that I’ve watched this video too many times.
This title, by Alex Robinson, is another that I certainly recall selling during this period of my comics retailing career, but alas it is also another one I haven’t read. I do remember it had a small but faithful following at the shop, some minor back issue movement, but not an outstanding seller or anything. It was a black and white (mostly) indie title, and that it held a readership through the tough post-crash times of the comics market is testament to its quality. It was also nominated for several comics awards, such as the Harveys and the Eisners, in the early 2000s. A French translation did win an award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2005, information I’m totally cribbing from the Wikipedia entry. Oh, and looking in a Diamond Comics stock listing, apparently it was voted by Wizard as the best indie graphic novel…of all time. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!
It’s a genre that we don’t see a lot of nowadays, slice-of-life real world “adventures” of a group of friends making their way through life in New York City. One character is a cartoonist of a popular comic book character, and his storyline apparently involves trying to get proper recompense for his work, so, you know, so plus ça change an’ all that. What’s nice is that this is a fairly short-run book, telling a complete story, with clever bookending covers on its first and last issues.
In addition to the 21-issue run of the main series, there were a couple of one-shots, including one in color. In 2017 IDW reprinted five issues in color in what appeared to be an attempt to reissue the entire series, but ended early. As for collections, the best and most recent were from Top Shelf: Box Office Poison Complete New Edition (as it’s called in Diamond’s database) appears to have the main series, and the More Box Office Poison Stories volume, putting lie to the title of the previous book, which includes all the other stuff not in that book, like some short stories and the one-shots and such.
So anyway, finding yet more comics I need to acquire and read that I’d missed the first time around, like this series, is a huge side effect of doing this survey. Maybe there’s a potion for that.
I don’t remember a lot about this series other than the collected edition was a 600 page brick in an era where there weren’t a lot of graphic novels that thick.
I met Alex Robinson at a con (nice guy!) and bought the color special. I liked it enough to seek out the main comic, which was a great “hang out” book. I ended up buying Robinson’s later graphic novels Tricked and Too Cool to Be Forgotten, which were also really good. He has a knack for drawing expressive characters and balancing humor and drama.
Alex Robinson is also currently co-host of the very entertaining Star Wars Minute podcast.
“In 2017 IDW reprinted five issues in color in what appeared to be an attempt to reissue the entire series, but ended early”
I think that happened with IDW more than once!
“So anyway, finding yet more comics I need to acquire and read that I’d missed the first time around”
Or, save time and money and re-read Bone!
It’s a really nice book. For some reason, at the Half Price Books by my house, copies often show up there and they are about 50% of the time signed. He must have been popular at some signing around here once upon a time.
I just recently read Alex Robinson’s Tricked, and it was really good. Made me want to dig in the vast Chas-ter archives to read BoP again. Great pick!