From the critically-acclaimed cartoonist behind Box Office Poison and Tricked comes the delightful 2 Cool 2 B 4Gotten, a story of second chances... read full description
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Sep 06, 2008
Kristen
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Jul 29, 2011
Sam
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SPOILERS
I'm a bit undecided with Alex Robinson. "Box Office Poison" was really too long and rubbish while "Tricked" had at least more of a story and was about 200 pages shorter. Anyway, I read that his latest "Too Cool To Be Forgotten" was the best graphic novel of the year (2008) and saw it in the library so picked it up. It's a small book, much more so than the gargantuan paperbacks with 400-600 pages in them. It's more like 100 pages in a small hardbac More...
I'm a bit undecided with Alex Robinson. "Box Office Poison" was really too long and rubbish while "Tricked" had at least more of a story and was about 200 pages shorter. Anyway, I read that his latest "Too Cool To Be Forgotten" was the best graphic novel of the year (2008) and saw it in the library so picked it up. It's a small book, much more so than the gargantuan paperbacks with 400-600 pages in them. It's more like 100 pages in a small hardbac More...
Oct 23, 2010
Tom
rated it:
The Mulligan Life: Too Cool To Be Forgotten (Top Shelf Productions) by Alex Robinson
High school reunions have a way of bringing out a grand mal mid-life crisis that makes all of the other introspective bumps in the road seem laughable. With his own 20-year reunion looming in a year, Alex Robinson headed his teenage years off at the pass with a fictional blast to the past. Andy Wicks (the central character in Too Cool) finds himself trapped in his former 15 year old body after a vi More...
High school reunions have a way of bringing out a grand mal mid-life crisis that makes all of the other introspective bumps in the road seem laughable. With his own 20-year reunion looming in a year, Alex Robinson headed his teenage years off at the pass with a fictional blast to the past. Andy Wicks (the central character in Too Cool) finds himself trapped in his former 15 year old body after a vi More...
Apr 10, 2010
Hannah
rated it: 
I bought this book today at the MoCCA Festival (http://www.moccany.com/content/mocca-fes...) and read it on the train on the way home...and was BAWLING by the end. I'm a huge fan of Alex Robinson's other slice-of-life graphic novels (Box Office Poison, Tricked), so I knew this was gonna be a good read when I picked it up. But I wasn't prepared for how truly moving it would be. It has all the humor and humanity I've come to love in Robinson's work, and all the quirky pop culture-y smirks as well.
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Apr 08, 2010
Idleprimate
rated it:
Robinson's latest was excellent and satisfying. It was also moving and i felt choked up and pained while reading it.
It's a tender tale of strife in adolescence, wrapped in reflection and healing rendered through the metaphor of time travel.
I really enjoy how with his art, most of the time he uses a straightforward and consistent style, so as to not make you conscious of story-telling, but then at key moments employs abstraction and surrealism, to raise a crescendo for em More...
It's a tender tale of strife in adolescence, wrapped in reflection and healing rendered through the metaphor of time travel.
I really enjoy how with his art, most of the time he uses a straightforward and consistent style, so as to not make you conscious of story-telling, but then at key moments employs abstraction and surrealism, to raise a crescendo for em More...
Jul 31, 2011
Matti
rated it: 
Alex Robinsonin "Tricked" ja "Box Office Poison" ovat sanalla sanoen mestarilllisia sarjakuvaromaaneja, joten tartuin myös tekijän uusimpaan albumiin "Too Cool To Be Forgotte"" (Top Shelf, 2008) suurin odotuksin. Lisäksi juonikuvio herätti etukäteen runsaasti kiinnostusta ihan henkilökohtaisista syistä; niin tupakoinnin lopettamisen sietämätön vaikeus kuin hivenen traumaattiset muistot lukioajasta ovat aiheita, joiden kanssa on joutunut painiskelemaan.
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Jul 07, 2010
Patrick
rated it:
Read this in one sitting last night. Even though you can see the "surprise ending" forming practically from page 8, it nonetheless holds an emotional punch. But really what this book is good at getting across is the futility of trying to use the knowledge and wisdom accrued from adult life to reason with the denizens of the High School Age- both teenagers and adults alike. Logic and reason don't work with any of them, and it's scary to think even if you lived your life all over again w
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Feb 04, 2009
Arthur
rated it: 
What a chore. The ending was moving, but that didn't make up for all those linked thought balloons I had to wade through. Sometimes up to six of them went into making one big thought cloud swirling around the protagonist's head. Getting those clouds behind me wouldn't have felt so much like work, if there was something in the depicted highschool (re-)experience that hadn't been told many times before. The reader gets bombarded with many names of school persons, as if it's the beginning of a gian
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Oct 10, 2009
Rebecca
rated it:
I thought this was well-written and made sense, and was realistic (for certain values of realistic that take time travel into account) in that going back in time to high school and trying to make different choices didn't mean that those choices would work or be any better than the original choices. I did like that he didn't go back in time for the reason he thought he did, but I did kind of figure out what was going on from clues the writer dropped. Not sure if they were supposed to be easy to f
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Feb 03, 2012
Selina
rated it:
Andy gives hypnosis a try as a last ditch attempt to quit smoking fro his wife and daughters. It doesn't quite work as expected as he finds himself transported back into the body of his teenage self, in high school in 1985.
On the surface this looks like a comedy time travel type story, but as with Robinson's other work it does have more going on under the surface than that. Though the comedy of a man in his forties getting another chance at enjoying being a teenager is funny as well.
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On the surface this looks like a comedy time travel type story, but as with Robinson's other work it does have more going on under the surface than that. Though the comedy of a man in his forties getting another chance at enjoying being a teenager is funny as well.
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Oct 02, 2009
Maré
rated it:
I don't know what I was expecting from this book. This seems to happen a lot. I guess I'm pretty uninformed? I just pick up books based on personal recommendations or hype. Or someone else will be reading a book and I'll just be curious.
So! THERE IS TIME TRAVEL IN THIS BOOK YOU GUYS.
Time travel is my faaavorite plot device. Things get so wacky and complicated. I love it. Felt like an 80's movie at times. Something really feel-goody about it. Like a guy-gets-the-girl kind More...
So! THERE IS TIME TRAVEL IN THIS BOOK YOU GUYS.
Time travel is my faaavorite plot device. Things get so wacky and complicated. I love it. Felt like an 80's movie at times. Something really feel-goody about it. Like a guy-gets-the-girl kind More...
May 02, 2010
Kennis
rated it:
If you could go back to your past, what would you do differently? A simple question that is repeatedly asked in various time-travel stories. Too Cool To Be Forgotten takes this idea and uses it to express our notions of the "self." By looking into our past, we can ask: What moments in our lives truly shaped who we are and what moments were rather insignificant - they may not always be the ones we expect. Alex Robinson does a fantastic and gorgeous job of uncovering these life lessons t
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Mar 15, 2010
Steve
rated it:
Short tale of Andy, a middle-aged smoker who, under hypnosis to quit, finds himself transported back to high school. The mature mind within the youthful body takes opportunities to redo some memorable failures, and make some amends with his family. And finally, for the first time, he deals with the biggest crisis of his adolescence.
Well written, good story, and has a bonus chuckle at the end from the proofreaders about a typo the author left on one page. (They evidently dispute his d More...
Well written, good story, and has a bonus chuckle at the end from the proofreaders about a typo the author left on one page. (They evidently dispute his d More...
Jan 18, 2009
Brandy
rated it:
I haven't read much Alex Robinson--I think possibly just Tricked--but it impressed me so much that I was really looking forward to this book. My first surprise was the size of it--not much over 100 pages, and roughly the size of a trade paperback. The story was uninspired, rushed and (at times) maudlin. Robinson does make readers care about his characters, but while I cared about our hero here, I didn't like him much or get too invested in him.
Overall: eh. Robinson has done some More...
Overall: eh. Robinson has done some More...
Sep 01, 2008
Mark
rated it:
A 40-year-old heavy smoker signs up for some couch therapy, and thereby gets hypnotized back to his high school days. The Back to the Future premise seemed promising, and occasionally Robinson goes somewhere new with it. When our protagonist views his "high school" mom as looking the same age in 1985 as in 2010, for example. Or the fact that his 15-year-old self is now preternaturally horny, yet totally freaked out by the jailbait all around him. Through it all, the idea that geek-time
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Aug 25, 2008
Chad
rated it:
When reading Alex Robinson, I've found that its hard not to feel something positive toward his characters. They're always remarkably human, and he's never afraid to show you their ugly sides. Andy Wicks, the protagonist of "Too Cool To Be Forgotten" is no different on this fundamental level.
But on the broader level, he's a bit disappointing, in that, he's a bit too steeped in a gee-whiz, golly-gosh attitude toward the plot he's dutifully trudging through. The first half More...
But on the broader level, he's a bit disappointing, in that, he's a bit too steeped in a gee-whiz, golly-gosh attitude toward the plot he's dutifully trudging through. The first half More...
Aug 16, 2008
Brad
rated it:
A middle-aged guy named Andy tries to stop smoking by seeing a hypnotist, who sends his mind back to his high school days. So it's Big or 13 Going on 30 in reverse. Andy realizes that he's sent back to the very week he started smoking, so he resolves to alter that part of his past, as well as a few other peer pressure-induced behaviors.
It's a decent, not ridiculously original idea for a story, but Robinson relies a bit too much on adolescent cliches, thought balloons, and an unsurprising More...
It's a decent, not ridiculously original idea for a story, but Robinson relies a bit too much on adolescent cliches, thought balloons, and an unsurprising More...
Jul 30, 2008
Erik
rated it:
I picked up this latest graphic novel by Robinson for 50% off during the last hours of the San Deigo Comic-Con this last Sunday. Considering that it was just released in time for the Con – as many a graphic novelist and artist do these days – that was a pretty purchase. (And in hardback, to boot.) Like Alan Moore and Frank Miller, Robinson’s infrequent output never ceases to amaze. Nor does his story-telling fail to astonish and remind you that he’s still in his prime after a decade in comics.
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Jul 24, 2008
Peter
rated it:
Like all of Robinson's work this book is heart felt and brutally honest. However is so mired in it's Quantum Leap conceit that it fails to be interesting at all. I've seen Back to the Future and Peggy Sue Got Married... Robinson is above this kind of storytelling (you can see this in the party scene and the final scene with Andy's father), why can't this just be happening? I would have found the purpose, or content of the story more effective. Instead I'm still thinking about old Andy trying
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Jan 05, 2012
Lauren
rated it:
While I can appreciate the storyline, the whole book felt more like an after-school special or the sort of story seventh graders might read in compulsory health education classes. I had trouble with the main character realizing only once making out with he teenage girl that his adult life was still relevant to his actions on his hypnostate even though his entire mission was based on his adult life. The characters were one dimensional people masquerading as archetypes win very little bearing on t
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Dec 07, 2011
Matt
rated it:
Lately, I've been interested in the topic of reliving portions of your life. In fact, we talked about it on one of the recent episodes of my podcast, The Sci-Fi Christian:
http://thescifichristian.com/2011/10/epi...
While this aspect of the story was fun to read through, the thing that hit me the most emotionally was when the main character dealt with the complexities of the relationship he had with his father. Very emotional.
http://thescifichristian.com/2011/10/epi...
While this aspect of the story was fun to read through, the thing that hit me the most emotionally was when the main character dealt with the complexities of the relationship he had with his father. Very emotional.
Feb 21, 2009
Jodi
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Too Cool to be Forgotten is a slender little graphic novel by Alex Robinson about Andy Wicks and his inability to quite smoking. Andy, 37, has tried everything he can think of to quit smoking. After years of failure he tries hypnosis at the urging of his wife.
Andy’s not so keen on this method, but goes for it anyway. Once the hypnosis is underway Andy finds himself transported back in time to 1985, a few days before he smoked his first cigarette. Andy, ever the smartie-pants decides More...
Andy’s not so keen on this method, but goes for it anyway. Once the hypnosis is underway Andy finds himself transported back in time to 1985, a few days before he smoked his first cigarette. Andy, ever the smartie-pants decides More...
Jan 08, 2009
Cathy
rated it:
i wasn't blown away by the illustration, but the story was certainly moving. for the sake of his wife and two daughters, alex agrees to try a hypnosis session as a last ditch attempt to quit smoking. the doc somehow sends him back to his high school years and he gets to use his adult experience to remedy some past wrongs. robinson gets the (stresses of) h.s. just right and worked extremely hard to draw a tear from my eye. he got a couple.
Jan 20, 2010
Ana
rated it:
Poignant story about middle-aged Andy undergoing hypnosis as a last resort to rid himself of his smoking habit. The hypnosis returns him to his high school years when he'll be able to relive the day that he started smoking and hopefully stop his young self from starting. Except maybe things aren't exactly as they seem. Interesting take on getting a second chance to make things right, even if it's not the thing you thought you'd change.
Jul 24, 2009
Susie
rated it:
I love the idea that the exact sequence of events in your life is what has made you who you are and put you in the exact time and place you currently are. We all have things we wouldn't mind changing but would you risk changing those things if it changed everything else about your past that you like.
But what I ultimately liked about this book was it was high school nostalgia with the perfect blend of adult insight and youthful longings.
But what I ultimately liked about this book was it was high school nostalgia with the perfect blend of adult insight and youthful longings.
Dec 07, 2008
Heather
rated it:
Wow. This little book is entertaining and, ultimately, profoundly moving. 40-year-old Andy goes to the hypnotist to get help in quitting smoking, but instead, he finds himself reliving 10th grade, with all the knowledge his maturity has brought. I think this might be a different book for teen readers than it will be for old ladies like myself, but I think teens would enjoy it, too.
Some mature material; may not be appropriate for younger teens.
Some mature material; may not be appropriate for younger teens.
Jun 16, 2009
Needleroozer
rated it:
This is the poignant story story of a middle age man (only one year older than I am!) who undergoes hypnosis to quit smoking. Somehow the hypnosis sends him back to high school! He tries to be nicer to his mom and sister and the kids at school less popular than he is. He also tries to come to terms with his dying father. It's very moving, with good artwork. All in all, it's a nice book.
Aug 06, 2009
Earline
rated it:
This is the first Alex Robinson comic I have read and I've heard that it's one of his best. Although I have nothing to compare it to, I do have to say that this comic was pretty badass. Overall it made me laugh, cry, and super jealous of his amazingly innovative artwork.. oh and there's time traveling, what more could want?
Can't wait to check out Box Office Poison.
Can't wait to check out Box Office Poison.
Nov 05, 2011
Judith
rated it:
This book was okay. I could see the appeal for teens and adults, my age, who want to revisit their 1980s high school experience. Teens will probably laugh at us but many of the historical references in the book are true, especially the hair! I am sure glad I no longer use Aquanet! Oh, come one folks, vest-up to using it as well!
Apr 06, 2009
Linda
rated it:
Middle-aged Andy Wicks has tried everything to quit smoking, finally being hypnotized. He goes on a fantastic ride back to high school, trying to figure out what he's doing there, wondering whether what he does will change the future, and wishing he could snap out of it. Great look back into the trials and poignancy of adolences.
