 The Surgeon General heartily approves this comic.
Okay, so maybe we haven't gotten a literal endorsement, but it's a safe bet that Too Cool to Be Forgotten, a new graphic novel hitting in July from Top Shelf and writer/artist Alex Robinson (Box Office Poison, Tricked) would be high on any health-conscious official's hot list. In it, forty-something Andy Wicks—dogged by 20 years of blackened lungs courtesy of a smoking addiction—undergoes hypnosis to rid himself of the habit.
It works, but a little too well: Wicks is inexplicably hurled back to high school, McFly-style, so he can choose not to take that fateful first puff.
"2007 was my twentieth high school reunion and it got me thinking about that time of my life and why it has stuck with me, for better or worse," explains Robinson of the book's origins. "I've never been a smoker, but I'm certainly a slave to some other vices."
Wicks' rewind allows him to observe the quaint rituals of teenage life—dating, sibling squabbles, parties—with an adult's maturity, but a more sobering story develops when he realizes he has another chance to interact with his father, who's about to die from Lou Gehrig's Disease. It's a conceit Robinson describes as more "psychologically autobiographical than factually. I'll say that my father and I have had our issues, and it's something I've wrestled with for a long time."
The narrative gear shift—which bypasses the more mundane time-travel escapades—was Robinson's plan from the start. "I wanted to avoid a lot of the clichés of the time-travel genre and focus more on the character element. In a way, the whole story is a metaphor for therapy, delving into your personal history to figure out why you behave the way you do."
It's safe to assume the award-winning creator won't have to do any hypnotizing himself to get people to read Too Cool. Robinson has an ardent fan base, and though it's not anything he's had any experience with himself, he does admit to "some suspicious memory lapses."
"If anyone can recall seeing me from July 23, 1998 through August 8, 2002, please contact me courtesy of this magazine." |
