Drunken Owls and Other Delights

[alexbot3000, this one may amuse you...]

My reading as of late has primarily been focusing on the pile of "read-then-get-rid-of" titles that have been in my collection gathering dust. I'm actually making some good headway, so this means that I'm closer to getting around to reading the newer stuff I pick up. My only problem being that I'm currently halfway through the Lord of the Rings (literally--I just started the second half of The Two Towers), which is taking forever.

So I've been breaking up the slowness by rereading some comic trades I haven't picked up in awhile. I'm currently reading Alex Robinson's Box Office Poison, and y'know, I'd forgotten just how much I enjoyed it the first time out, and how well it still holds up! I usually ignore and forget about most indie comics, as most of them tend to irritate me after awhile, and most of them don't always hold up after a few years (my main complaint being that, like Seinfeld, they were funny and poignant at one point, but are merely irritating and/or unfunny now). BoP, on the other hand, though it's obviously set some time in the 1990s, still works as a story today. Each character has its own dimensional originality--even the secondary characters. And each one changes to some degree--some for the better, some not, but they all change, and that's impressive, especially in the comics field. There's also the fact that the dialogue is realistic, but not overly so. No Bendis chattiness (I realize now that Bendis and Tarantino are in fact the same writer and needs to lay off the caffeine), and very little "aren't-I-funny" smarminess, but real conversations one would have with friends or relatives*. To me as a writer, those are things that stick out for me and make me want to reread these things repeatedly.

(* - In fact, there's a great chapter where Stephen and Jane visit Jane's family for Christmas, and Stephen notices how Jane speaks differently when she's around her sisters...that one scene alone impressed me as a great example of giving depth to a character--in this case, Stephen noticing something like that, and Jane for being that way.)

Of course, there are moments of obscure and self referencing, but to be honest it's never intrusive. Alex's love for the Beatles pops up in an early chapter when Ed and Sherman go to Slagger's for a beer. Tony Consiglio (and Alex himself, actually) pop up as background characters repeatedly. And there are lyric quotes galore throughout. Like I said, though...never intrusive, but if you get the joke, it makes it that much more amusing. Referencing like that is always a double-edged sword when writing, as not everyone will get it, and more often than not it'll fall flat. It's very tricky to do as a writer.

If you haven't read it yet, go do so--it's a great read!

And yeah...alexbot3000? That's why I still love reading your stuff. ;)