Seven Questions with ALEX ROBINSON

Today it is my pleasure to present an interview I recently had the good fortune to conduct with acclaimed comic creator Alex Robinson. Long-time readers of The Vault will recall that I have cited Robinson's Box Office Poison as both a major influence and a favorite series of mine, but BOP isn't the only story Robinson is known for. He has also won multiple awards for titles such as Too Cool to be Forgotten and Tricked. So since he probably doesn't actually need this introduction at all, I'll shut up and get right to the goods.



1. Your adaptation of the L. Frank Baum story A Kidnapped Santa Claus is coming out next month, just in time for Christmas. What can you tell us about this book and what do you have planned for your next project?

Harper-Collins was doing a project in which they asked cartoonists to adapt some classic public domain Christmas short stories into comics form and it seemed like something I would never do on my own so I said yes. The idea of adapting someone else’s short story, keeping it family friendly and working with a major publisher were all enough out of my comfort zone that I figured I had to do it.

I’ve started working on a new project but I’m only working on page eighteen so I don’t want to say too much about it yet. I don’t even know how long it will be at this point. I was originally thinking about 200 pages but I could also see it being much, much longer. If it does turn out to be a much longer book I’ll probably release it as a series of paperbacks, rather than wait. It could take me years to complete and that’s a long time to be out of the public eye with nothing coming out.



2. How is adapting a work like A Kidnapped Santa Claus different from creating a new story? I’m wondering what the process was in terms of translating a text work to the comics page, not to mention working with someone else's story.

It was a very interesting challenge. For one thing, the original story is only eleven pages long and I had to translate that into sixty pages of comics. The story is mostly a description of the actions, so I was free to come up with a lot of characterization and flesh out the characters. I also made some changes which I hoped would make it appeal to modern kids, since they’re probably a bit more sophisticated than kids were back in Baum’s day. Mentally, my target audience was about ten years old, but I sort of thought it like a Warner Brothers cartoon in that I threw in some stuff that adults would like, especially adults who read comics.

The other challenge was that Harper wanted to see a script ahead of time so they could see what I wanted to change and I’d never scripted out any of my books before, so to sit down and write everything out without drawing anything was very weird.



3. Your last graphic novel, Too Cool to Be Forgotten, is up for a Harvey Award this year in the Best Original Graphic Album category [editor's note: since this interview was conducted, Too Cool did in fact win the Harvey in this category]. How much of the high school experience portrayed in Too Cool is based on your own life and how do you decide what autobiographical elements you should and shouldn’t add to your work?

It was sort of a mix. Some things I tried to make very close to my own life (for instance, Andy’s house is the house I grew up in) but the story called for some things to be different. Andy’s family is different than mine, for instance, and I had to make Andy much more of a “normal” kid than I was. I pretty much spent my high school years hunched over drawing comics so that would’ve been very boring to read.
In general, as time goes on it gets harder to use autobio, at least without disguising it a lot. My life is pretty boring so there’s not much temptation.



4. In Lower Regions, you produced a 56 page story that features only one word. What made you decide to write this without any dialogue or captions? And how did this affect the storytelling – did you have to storyboard the pacing and layouts more closely, or was it essentially the same as your other projects?

I was struggling on Too Cool so I wanted to do a short, fun project that would sort of loosen me up and recharge my batteries. Originally it was just going to be a short story that was going to be a sort of jam with Mike Dawson but he changed his mind and I was having so much fun I wanted to expand it anyway, so it worked out. I just sort of sat down and asked myself what I would love to draw and the answer was a sexy lady killing various monsters without having to draw backgrounds. In an effort to keep the story as simple as I could I decided to have no dialogue.

It was a lot of fun but got tricky in the end. When you’re dealing with an unusual setting—in this case, a fantasy world—it helps to be able to explain things to the reader but I couldn’t do that so I was really limited as to what I could do.

I want to do more fantasy stories but it will have to have words next time around.



5. Going back to the Harvey awards, this isn’t the first time you’ve been nominated; your graphic novel Tricked won both the Harvey and the Ignatz awards in 2006. I’m wondering how the format of working on a graphic novel differs from working on a serialized title like Box Office Poison. Does it provide more freedom since you don’t have to worry about possibly artificial story breaks caused by page counts? Or does a serialized structure actually help in terms of plotting story beats?

Actually, by this point I’ve mostly been working in the straight-to-paperback format longer than I did serialized so I’m used to it by now. It was a hard adjustment at first, mostly trying to get used to the idea of having a deadline that was years away instead of every three months or whatever. It’s very easy to procrastinate.

It does affect the storytelling, in that having separate issues made me do more self-contained chapters and try to have cliffhangery things. I actually had a formula with Box Office Poison in which I would alternate plot-driven issues with characterization-driven ones. It definitely gives the book an episodic feel, for better or for worse.

If I do serialize my new book the way I’ve been thinking about it will be interesting to see how that works out.



6. One of my favorite comics is Box Office Poison, which seemed almost eerie in how close it was to my life at the time. I'm curious what your process was in developing the concept. Did you begin with an overall storyline already in mind, or did it develop as you went along? How did you end up at Antarctic Press?

I had a very loose plot in mind and certain themes I wanted to address but I gave myself a lot of room to play around, more or less making most of it up as I went. I’ve done all my books this way, though the more plot driven ones like Too Cool don’t leave as much room to play around. One of the things I want to do with my new book is try and recapture that spirit, having a very loose idea of what’s going to happen but also letting the characters sort of tell me what to do and let it grow very organically.

There are risks to working this way but I think it can also add a touch of realism, in that everyone’s life is kind of a loosely plotted novel. You have some idea of what’s going to happen, plans you make in life but sometimes you’ll have false starts, dead ends, little side trips that don’t really change anything but add texture to your life.



7. Lastly, what’s one specific storytelling technique you use that you could share with new creators to help them hone their craft?

One thing I did with Box Office Poison that started out as a writing exercise, sort of, but which became a popular feature of the book was the “Question Pages” where I would ask some personal question and have each character answer it (for instance “What fictional character would you have dinner with?”). You don’t have to include it in the book but it’s a great way to get to know your characters and come up with ideas. I think by the time you finish asking one of your characters fifty of those types of questions you’ll really know them, and ideally by the end their answers will be second nature to you (and if one character continually stumps you or gives you answers you weren’t expecting, you might consider that it’s the nature of that character to be evasive, deceptive or full of surprises—but make sure that it isn’t just you being lazy!).

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Breaking the Fourth Wall: Episode 2

Twelve years ago, fresh out of college, I decided it was time to blow the doors off the comic book industry by introducing it to the world’s newest writing superstar: me. I banged out a couple stories, sent them in to the powers that be and waited breathlessly by the mailbox for the inevitable notice that I had been personally selected by Stan Lee to revamp the entire Marvel Universe.

And in the grand scheme of things, the effort didn’t actually go all that badly; my first submission netted me a request from a major publisher (Vertigo) to rewrite the story and send it back in, incorporating some editorial suggestions so they could take another look at publishing it. Yes, it seemed like I was in business.

Except, of course, I wasn’t. As it turned out, I never did get any of my projects published and that was the highlight of my brief foray into comics. Yet, looking back now, I can see a number of lessons that can be learned from this episode and applied as I launch my second attempt to break into the industry. Having good ideas for stories and being able to write them well is important, but knowing how the business works and how to present those ideas in the proper manner is even more important for someone trying to break in to the industry. Here, then, are Four Lessons I learned last time I tried to become a comic book writer.

Lesson One: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Recently as I was searching the web for comic book writing resources (of which there are very few) I came across one pro who mentioned as set up to an essay that he had presented his editor with 12 pitches, one of which the editor liked. It sounds like a lot, but it jibes with my own experience.

Back in 1997, I put together a total of three pitches. Now, three sounds like an okay number, but the problem was that one of those pitches was for a Marvel property and one was for a DC property, meaning that I only had one actual creator owned pitch that I could just submit to anyone. Now, sure, it’s possible that I might have stumbled into that lucky combination of coming up with a great pitch and actually submitting it to the exact editor who loves it, but simply on a mathematical basis it was a bad idea. Having multiple pitches that you can send to multiple outlets is going to increase your odds. It’s that simple. It might seem like a lot more work, but if one of the stories gets bought by a company I’m guessing it won’t seem like all that much work after all.

Besides the basic math, having more pitches also allows a writer to cover more creative ground. Let’s say you have one nice superhero pitch. The fact is, no matter how great that pitch is, you’re limiting yourself to publishers who do superhero work. By coming up with pitches in multiple genres, you open up the door to new publishers and new opportunities. You may have gotten interested in comics because you wanted to write the coolest Wolverine story ever, but in order to succeed in the business I think you need a broader appreciation for the medium itself and a willingness to explore all the avenues available to you.

As it turned out, not having more pitches ready came back to haunt me, which is the focus of our second nugget of wisdom.

Lesson Two: Embrace networking

It’s instructive to spend some time reading the lettercolumns of your old comic books before you get ready to send in submissions. If you look closely, you’ll soon begin stumbling on names that at the time signified nothing more than just another fan but now are famous within the industry. Mark Evanier, Kurt Busiek, Dave Cockrum – the number of pros who began as fans is too long to list. Wendy and Richard Pini met through a lettercolumn and they not only ended up creating the classic fantasy series Elfquest, they got married to boot.

What’s the point? Well, back in the day, when the only form of communication fans had with comic book creators was just to drop a letter in the mail and hope it got read, the contacts that these fans created still ended up helping them get their foot in the door. Nowadays, with the internet and conventions taking place every weekend, networking with pros is easier than ever. Which is good, because it’s also more important than ever; if Marvel and DC only read proposals from known quantities, then you’d best start getting yourself known.

This is a lesson I learned a little too late. When I received a handwritten letter from an editor at Vertigo saying that she liked my series but wanted to see a few changes made to it, what I had in my hands was networking gold. And I dutifully sent in a revision. But when I didn’t hear back, I let the contact lapse. What I should have done, of course, was send her another pitch for a different project; after all, if she liked my writing, maybe I would find a vehicle for it that better fit their publishing mandate. But because I didn’t have any other pitches to send her (see: Lesson One), I ended up letting go of what could have been my path into the comic world, which was a huge mistake.

Lesson Three: Do your homework

So, why did one of my three pitches gain some traction while the other two went nowhere? There are probably a lot of reasons, but the simplest explanation is that I sent Vertigo a pitch that actually fit what the company was doing, while the other two pitches were random at best and downright dumbass at worst.

For example, one of my favorite comics as a kid was ROM: Spaceknight. Now, Rom was an alien who came to Earth to track down evil shape changers who were eating human brains; he looked and acted kind of like a square version of Silver Surfer. I thought he was a great character that had been sorely neglected, so I came up with a fun pitch for a new series, with a nice hook to replace the defunct wraith angle and some new supporting characters to keep things modern. It was a pretty strong pitch.

Only one problem: Marvel doesn’t own the rights to Rom. As a licensed product, Rom’s publishing rights belong to the toy company that designed him. Because of this, even if my pitch was the comic equivalent of The Bible: Part Two, the editors at Marvel wouldn’t even waste their time reading it to begin with because they couldn’t publish it if they wanted to.

Right there, a third of my entire library of pitches was rendered useless because I had failed to do the most basic research possible. And my third pitch didn’t do much better; it was a Watchmen-style deconstruction of superheroes, only with a 90’s sensibility instead of an 80’s sensibility. It was a fine enough story and pitch, but I sent it to Antarctic Press, which at the time was the home of giant robot comics and manga themed series like Ninja High School along with the occasional indie cartoon such as Alex Robinson's fantastic Box Office Poison (the source for the images accompanying this article; run, don't walk, to your nearest retailer and buy it now!). In other words, they couldn’t have given less of a crap about deconstructing superheroes, which was quite evident in the rejection note they sent me.

Lesson Four: Don’t give up

Okay, that sounds like the most clichéd treacle ever – and it is – but in this case what I specifically mean is, don’t give up when you don’t have to give up.

Looking back on my experience from ’97 and the lessons I’ve laid out here, it’s clear that what I thought was a failure at the time was actually a series of opportunities that I failed to recognize. When I got the positive feedback from the editor at Vertigo, it should have been a breakthrough. But because I didn’t have any other projects ready to follow up with – in part because I hadn’t done my homework about what kind of pitches were viable in that marketplace – I failed to capitalize on the networking opportunity that had presented itself. I became discouraged and ended up going in a different professional direction; I gave up on comics.

But now I realize I didn’t have to. In retrospect, getting my first submission published seems like kind of a pipe dream; but even if the next five pitches had all been rejected by Vertigo, a relationship could have been developed. Heck, even the negative feedback from Antarctic was a positive in a way; any press is good press when you’re trying to get your name out there and even if a company doesn’t like the story they may like the writing or the attitude and give your next pitch a closer look. Plus, negative feedback is still feedback and can be used to help hone your craft. If people don’t like something, there’s usually a reason, and getting a rejection letter can help you figure out what people didn’t like about your project.

So don’t give up when you don’t have to give up, because even things that appear to be setbacks at the time could end up being the step you need to climb up to the next level. If I had realized that at the time, it’s possible you’d be reading my comics right now instead of my blog.

Conclusion

What have we learned, then? To my mind, these are the very basics of breaking into the comic book world. Firstly, develop a large number of properties, preferably in a wide range of genres. Secondly, research the companies you are submitting to so you can choose the correct projects to pitch to them and tailor the pitches to fit their sensibilities. Thirdly, form relationships with people in the industry, even with the editors rejecting you, because the more people who know about your work the better the chance is that someone will like it. And lastly, don’t give up. It’s a pretty simple blueprint, really, but then, everything seems simple once you’ve already figured it out. Now it’s just a matter of executing the strategy, and over the next few weeks I’ll be doing just that -- with you, gentle reader, along for the trip.



Coming Up in Breaking the Fourth Wall: So, now that we’ve learned our lessons, some of you are probably wondering about my nearly-successful pitch to Vertigo. In short, it was an updating of Haunted Tank, but instead of the ghost of J. E. B. Stuart helping his good ol’ boy namesake make it through World War II, it took place a generation later in a more morally ambiguous war, with a new namesake sure to clash with the Confederate general: an African-American tank commander.

If that sounds familiar, it may be because Vertigo just published a Haunted Tank series earlier this year with the exact same premise. Later this week, then, we’ll take a closer look at my pitch and compare it to the actual published story, discussing concepts like simultaneous development and examining how different writers handling the same idea can come up with wildly different stories. See you then.

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