Alex Robinson’s best known book, the unbearably long and outdated Box Office Poison, featured a group of boring people talking about their boring lives – hey, it was the ‘90s when that sorta thing was hip and fresh! Years later and Robinson’s back with a (thankfully) much shorter book about boring older people talking about their boring lives in Our Expanding Universe.
The book is about three middle-aged friends living in New Yawk and dealing with adulthood. One of them is a father with another kid on the way, one is a soon-to-be dad, and another is happily divorced and childless. Watch in awestruck boredom as Robinson spins out an unremarkable non-story featuring these three dull men as they play box-court basketball (whatever that is) and blather on with their boring wives and boring friends about nothing!
Along the way they’ll learn about letting go of their youth (or something forced and banal like that) and embracing the responsibility of fatherhood. One of them won’t. Occasionally someone will pop up to remark on the wonders of the universe. Still awake? Try reading this book to remedy that!
It’s like a Woody Allen movie without the wit. Actually it’s more like a soap opera without the drama but with all the bad dialogue. Punctuating the characters’ speech with “uh” every few words isn’t realistic, it’s annoying. The art isn’t bad but the pages are crammed with far too much dreary talking so it’s a super-slow read - and all the extra “uh, uh, blah blah!” doesn’t add anything to the “story”! There's no original insight or clever commentary into the subject matter to make this endeavour feel worthwhile.
Such a monotonous comic, guys - to the one or two of you possibly contemplating it, don’t bother!
Our Expanding Universe
No comments:
Post a Comment