Customer Reviews

Tricked

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Okay, I liked this book a lot, but the other reviews here are like the kind of rabid fan reviews you get on Fruits Basket and Salior Moon manga.

A review on the back of the book says it is like an Altman movie. A review on this site says that the book is full of wonderful three dimensional characters. I disagree on both counts.

The plot comes to too much of an overbaked climax. It is still good and entertaining, but Altman has stood for less easy, less obviously indebted to the medium of film resolutions. Say Robinson's film touchstone here is Curtis Hanson or Guy Ritchie -- effective and complex, but too prone to letting the pulp of their plots overwhelm the character arcs.

The characters are mostly, if not flat like the sports card shop guy or Phoebe's Dad, at least they change in yawn-inducingly familiar ways on the whole. Our nutty fan, Beam himself and Beam's new personal assistant . . . I've seen them before. Maybe I haven't seen them as nuanced as I have here in a long time, but there are too many places where there is nothing new and I knew exactly what was going to happen.

Not coincidentally, the places where the characters fall flat are exactly those places where the overly contrived Beam "trick" lies.

The places where this work is genius are in those places that surround the beautifully realized character of plus-sized waitress Caprice. The way Robinson works on issues of romance, hurt, body image, friendship and the way we become the things we hate and that hated us, at least for a while, are sublime. As a character, she makes Phoebe and our sports card forger come alive and come out of the stereotypes they revert to in other potions of the book.

In terms of the art and layout this book is also great, but with moments that prevent it from reaching the fifth star. As a small example, there is a tremendous splash page of Ray Beam's face vivisected into panels. Only in one small panel his sunglasses are missing and we see a small portion of his eye, his humanity. Excellent! Then, toward the end of the book, we get a splash of Steve, our nutcase, splintered into panel shards of insanity. Okay. Nice, but just like the bit where he yanks out his tooth with pliers, I've already had that idea digested for me multiple times in American pop culture.

Robinson wants the end of the book, with its "exciting" ending and its tripped out but mostly indulgent art flourishes, to have great impact. Maybe. He's obviously working really hard here. But maybe that's the problem. Too much work. It feels a bit like he's gripping real hard.

To sum up, the book is tremendously entertaining, it's just that some of the entertainments are better than others. Unlike the reviewer here who argued that this is the type of graphic novel work that is allowing comics to hit a stride, I'd disagree. There are depressing indications that the field of "indie" comics is stuck somewhere between the ambition, scope and character of Los Bros Hernandez, the slice of life verisimilitude of Abel, Pekar and Satrapi, and the PoMo irony of Clowes, Ware and Moore. And like the late 90s "indie" film scene, this book is yet more evidence that maybe we're not really sure how to effectively and artistically navigate through those waters.

I'd never checked out anything by Robinson before, but the opening pages intrigued me enough to take it home for the weekend. And at the end, the overall effect was kind of like reading the graphic novel equivalent of a reasonably decent indie film. The obvious comparison is to ones like Short Cuts or Amores Perros, since the book alternates between the stories of six unrelated characters whose lives intersect over the course of the book until they come together at the climax. The six characters are: Ray Beam (a reclusive rock star mired in several years of writer's block), Steve (an obsessive and possibly schizophrenic fan of Ray's), Lily (a young Latina woman who becomes Ray's assistant), Nick (a struggling father and husband who forges sports star autographs for a living), Phoebe (a small-town teenager coming to the big city to find the father she never met), and Caprice (a waitress at a kitschy diner run by a gay couple).

The book is divided into fifty sections, each of which focuses on one of the six protagonists. This gives us plenty of time to get to know them, which is both a good and a bad thing. Ray is basically a total cliche of an ex-rock star: fancy home, lots of drugs, elaborate sex with hookers, total self-centeredness and inability to relate to the outside world. His writer's block isn't particularly interesting, and his portrayal is so over the top and implausible that it's hard take his focal position seriously. Similarly, Lily's role as the naive young woman who drifts into his life and falls in love with him is a thankless one, as she's basically reduced to playing a supporting love interest role. Ray's obsessed fan is marginally more interesting, but more for his venom and bile than as a nuanced characters. He's an IT support guy with some kind of mental illness (schizophrenia maybe?), and has stopped taking his meds. This makes him increasingly rude, erratic, and ultimately dangerous, which, again, is familiar turf. (There is a nice bit though where he goes to see his grandmother and you get a glimpse of his humanity trying to break through.)

The forger is a rather more interesting cat -- a husband and father who lies to his family about his job, and gets more and more involved in his crooked Russian boss's schemes. The teenager comes from New Mexico to find her father and eventually winds up at the diner where the waitress works. She's kind of a nonentity in the story, and her arc isn't particularly interesting. Finally, waitress Caprice is the most compelling character and clearly the heart and soul of the book. Her name is perhaps a little too coy, but otherwise, her parts are the most engaging and real. It's a bit disappointing then, that her self-sabotaging nature is exaggerated to the point that she shuts out on the guy she's in love with to hang out with the increasingly aggressive and annoying Nick.

In any event, the various storylines all dovetail in a violent climax at the diner that is reasonably predictable and reasonably satisfying. Again, like many decent indie films, it's enjoyable and maintains one's interest, with some typical characers and a few nice moments, but doesn't leave much of an impact or lasting impression.

Alex Robinson at his very best....

Amazing storyline, witty dialogues and complex beautiful characters who cannot let you put this one down...

I was sad when it was over!

Thanks to the work of gifted authors and artists the likes of Alex Robinson, the genre known as graphic novel is finally hitting its stride. Each three-dimentional character is brought to life by striking black and white images that accentuate the stark reality of each characters life. You may find yourself looking into this art as you would a mirror, learning from the lessons of its grossly human leads.

Following the lives of six people, Alex Robinson shows what lies at the depths of a reclusive and unproductive former rock legend, a forlorn server (aren't they all?), counterfeit artist, an obsessive crank, an adolescent daughter, and a backstabbing lover. Whose adventures he skips among in chapters presented in a countdown, 49 to 1, that reinforces the story's innate anticipation. They unknowingly stride towards the pulse-pounding climax, spiraling into each other in what can only be described as real life.

If you liked works such as "Blankets" or "Epileptic", you will find this nothing short of remarkable.

This 350 page Top Shelf graphic novel was written and drawn by Alex Robinson. The complex and engrossing plotline focuses on six individuals whose lives become increasingly connected. Ray is a fading rock star who, enthralled by office temp Lily, asked her to be his personal assistant. Nick tells his wife and family that he is a successful businessman but instead works as a forger in a sports memorabilia store. Teenaged Phoebe comes to NYC from New Mexico in search of her father. Steve is an unlovable loser and obsessive music fan who works in an IT department. Caprice balances struggling relationships and waitresses at The Little Piggy Diner, a setting for many of the fifty numbered segments. Robinson's fictional universe contains its own music, book and sports references. Like many other enthusastic reviewers I read this book in one day.

I read "a chapter' of Tricked in the anthology The Best American Comics 2006 (Best American) and knew I HAD read the rest of the book. Very glad I did. A collection of well constructed characters I find myself thinking about even weeks after finishing. Some surprising turns in the story/stories made this well worth getting.

The only reason I'm giving the book 4 and not 5 stars is because my copy literally fell apart while I was reading it. Maybe you'll getting a better physical product.

Robinson's new book is simply wonderful. It has edge to it, but the characters still fly off the page and you can imagine all the things that happen to them really happening. Each character is fully drawn and explored, even to the point of one character's struggle with mental psychosis revealing itself in the lettering getting harder to read the faster he falls away from reality. You must pick this up; it's definitely one of the best of 2005.

After reading Box Office Poison I thought I'd like more by the same author. This one doesn't compare and the story seemed filled with boring characters and pointless drama. I wouldn't risk wasting a few hours on this graphic novel.

This is a tremendous graphic novel. I am new to the form, and came across the author quite surrendipitously, but it unfolds like a luminous feature film, and the story has several arcs that are compelling throughout. Rarely a mistep; at worst, a passager or two of wooden dialogue. The linear narrative unfolds like one of the ensemble films of Robert Altman ("Short Cuts," "Dr. T and the Women," "Nashville") or Paul Thomas Anderson ("Boogie Nights," "Magnolia"), with intersecting stories with thematic similarities. Here, we have stories from the world of popular music, a large company's disgruntled IT technician, a big city diner, and the double-life or a family man/sports memorabilia forgerer.

The difference is it is sometimes hard to absolutely love a character in a vignette in one of those films. Here, though, we feel and inhabit the characters completely (in particular the flawed heroine "Capris"). The artwork is tremendous.

On a par with the work of Mazzachelli on Paul Auster's "City of Glass." I highly recommend this book.

TRICKED takes a stark turn from Robinson's last book, where frustrated talents struggled to climb the ladder. In their place we now have people who've already been to the top and are now burned-out. In place of the everyday people, we have a pampered celebrity, a pathological liar with a double life, and a mentally unstable celebrity stalker.

TRICKED starts out with the story of Ray Beam, front-man of the defunct rock group "The Tricks." It's been years since he's released anything, and now he's spent the past half-decade in his penthouse, tended to by people that he pays to be there. He's the typical spoiled, overindulged rock star, surrounded by hangers-on and sycophants. But he meets an unassuming woman who works as a temp for his agent/manager and decides he wants her....but she's not going to sleep with him just because he's Ray Beam.

TRICKED centers around Ray Beam more than the other characters. At the end, he's still the same spoiled, pampered celebrity he was before, despite what the writer tries to portray. I didn't actually LIKE this book because I hate stories about celebrities and I'm not the kind to venerate others because they're in the spotlight. I feel as thought Robinson has too much admiration for the Ray Beam character. Perhaps Robinson is trying to say that he wants to be a pampered celebrity himself?