[Book Review] Tricked

[ravenswept]

Tricked by Alex Robinson

Back Blurb:

"TRICKED follows the lives of six people - a reclusive rock legend, a heartbroken waitress, a counterfeiter, an obsessive crank, a lost daughter, and a frustrated lover - whose lives are unconnected until an act of violence brings them spiraling in on each other."

That entire blurb is just one sentence. A very concise sentence (rather apt for the tight storytelling) mind you, one that almost gets it all correct, but I guess they wanted to save space for the six review quotes they had as well. Given the chance, a better blurb might read:

TRICKED, Alex Robinson's sophomore work after his breakout hit BOX OFFICE POISON, is a slice-of-life tale of interconnectedness. The lives of six random people - a burnt out rock star, a counterfeiter, a daughter looking for her father, an obsessive-paranoid off his meds, a waitress who keeps making bad decisions, and an office temp in the right place at the right time - are slowly intertwined until the final pivotal moment they are all brought together. Filled with love, discovery, and people you see on the streets everyday, TRICKED continues Robinson's knack for producing real people behaving as real people and letting everything else fall into place.

Okay, longer, granted, but you get a better sense of what it's really about. Maybe not as evocative as "an act of violence brings them spiraling", but more honest. And that's really what Robinson is about, the honesty of the characters and situations.

I became aware of Tricked through his earlier work Box Office Poison (BOP), a very slice-of-life following of normal people living their lives. I loved his open and expressive art style, his subtle uses of cartoon proportions, symbols, and faces, and how very "real" it felt. When I learned he had a second book coming out, I pre-ordered it without really knowing what it was about.

I was not disappointed. Maybe not incredibly blown away, but still impressed and engaged.

Story
Most simply, Tricked is a countdown. The chapters are done in reverse order in a six chapter cycle, following the six lead characters in turn until the final moment the planets align and they are together. In order we follow

Ray - a burnt out, drugged up rock star, several years behind in putting out his latest album after breaking up his band and going solo;

Nick - a counterfeiter working as a sports memorabilia con artist, while telling his wife he's a 9 to 5 suit wearing business man;

Phoebe - a teenage "runaway", out on her own for the first time while trying to find the real father she didn't know she had;

Steve - an office tech who's obsessed with the broken up band, The Tricks, we meet him the day he forgets to take his medication and follow him as he falls more and more into paranoid delusions;

Caprice - a waitress at a kitschy-diner, whose weight issues keep her constantly on edge;

Lily - an office temp at a talent agency, who seems five minutes away from being fired

and watch as each life plays out until the final moment. The intertwining begins immediately in the first cycle, bringing two of the strings together almost right away. From there the connections build up, slowly bringing more and more them together in different ways. Chapter One is the big finish, the time when all cards fall, the fuse runs out, and all six main characters are together. Even if you see it coming, it doesn't make the time spent getting there wasted.

As I think I've implied before, Robinson is a master of the everyday person. Each character is very much their own person, easy to separate from the others in description alone as well as visually, as are all of the side characters, of whom there are many. The world is populated with individuals, each who have their own story and are rich with their personal history. Everyone acts without force; no one suddenly behaves as they shouldn't, though there are times you wonder what exactly they're thinking. They are natural within the bounds of who their character is, and who they become as the characters themselves grow and the story progresses.

If there is a downside to Tricked, it's that it's a structured story. BOP was much more life happening, with random things occurring in the way normal life happens. The characters act and react. Here, because there's much more a sense that "something" is going to happen, it's much easier to tell that there is a path being taken. Nothing happens out of sorts, but there are moments where it seems just a tad too neat.

Nick's character especially suffers most from this feeling. Of the six he's the least interesting and stays separated the longest from any of the others without some connect, ultimately being there for really only one reason. And it unfortunately doesn't feel worth it; not enough anyway, for having to deal with him up to this point.

The book is worth it's cover price, the characters make it worth it and the writing is extremely well done. The only hinge on all that is the base concept of the story itself, the one moment six random people are brought together. And it's the fact that they really aren't that random, not by the time the final moment comes, is part of it. This isn't how a small group of people happened to find themselves together in one moment of time, it's the connectedness of them that keeps the story together. It's like arguing that Friends is about six close friends, when you could just as well say it's about the one apartment and coffee shop that six people circle around. Yes, both are true, but one is more so than the other.

Art






Books like Tricked and BOP are what I think of when people talk about novel adaptations of movies. The mix of visual and written word do so much more than either alone; or maybe it's the visuals that help expand what the written word is saying.

Robinson works primarily in black and white; actually, I don't think he's done any color work, outside of covers. Everything he does is hand drawn, up to and including panel borders. You can tell he puts his heart onto the page, the smooth lines and hand-cramping lettering nothing else but a labor of love.

The two tone approach also lends itself to very graphic work. The sharp contrast and lack of any gray-scale makes everything pop from the page and easy to tell apart. It also allows for many noir moments, hiding faces in shadows and underscoring tense moments. Each page is bright and clean, making reading easy.

Except in one case. And it's intentional. As Steve falls further and further into his own madness, his inner monologue becomes more and more frenzied and Robinson is able to show us this as the written words become thinner and more rushed. He was already prone to rambling on about inane things, being a very stream-of-conscious voice over, but the further into the story we go the more he tangents out and it's (oddly) only that inner voice of madness that brings him back into focus. As well as his words, the panels themselves get more wobbly and unfocused, drawn free handed instead of with a ruler or some straight edge.

While there are some repeated elements from characters from BOP (granted that any artist has certain ways of doing things they're most comfortable with), there's really only one direct cameo from that book. Caprice is a mild hold over, appearing almost entirely as is from BOP, but she came in late in that one and regardless still feel more like a spiritual sister to each other than a direct continuation. Everyone else is original and structurally easy to pick apart from the next. No two background characters are alike, and the foreground ones are even easier to tell apart. Old, young, thick, thin, dark, light, everyone is distinctly their own.

One thing that Robinson doesn't shy away from is nudity, for males or females. You'll see full frontal from a few people, but it's not treated as a big thing; they are, and that's it. Keeping with them being real people, there are no idealized bodies drawn. Everyone who is depicted in any state of undress is shown to be a actual person with scars, gravity, hair, and everything else having it's effect on the body. No sex is shown - right up to and right after, yes, but nothing during - and everything is very tasteful. Most of the nudity happens in Ray's chapters, and maybe once is shown to be in an overtly positive manner. It's always for the story, never just because Robinson felt that "Hey, let's add some boobs to lighten things up."

Final Thoughts


While the whole experience of Tricked is much more smooth and controlled compared to BOP, it also makes for a much tighter told story. While it "suffers" from being a more conventionally told narrative, the cleanness involved also makes for a more controlled and thought out story. There is a reason for everything. Only rarely does it ever feel like something is forced, but even in those instances the characters still play very naturally.

Of everyone, I think the best parts of the story involved Phoebe and Caprice, whose stories are really the most compelling of the six. Caprice's body and self-confidence issues play very real to life, while Phoebe's search for her father are some of the more emotional grabbing parts of the story as a whole. That their stories became the second most intertwined only added to the experience. And theirs were the only ones I really wanted to know more about after Chapter One.

In the end, nothing ever comes close to making this an unenjoyable read. Drawn or not, the story is engaging and page turning, written in ways that make you want to know what happens next. The ticking clock as well helps turn the page, because you want to see what happens when it finally runs out. The characters are real and even if their situations are standard setups, that doesn't make you believe them any less.

Recommendation: Yes, it's definitely worth checking out