Thursday, July 17, 2008

Too Cool to be Forgotten

Now is this a great cover, or what!? It's only fitting that Too Cool to be Forgotten has a cover that will just demand that people pick it up from amongst the sea of other comic books on the shelf because Too Cool to be Forgotten is EXCELLENT in every respect. This is my other early front-runner for graphic novel of the year, with the other one being Lynda Barry's What It Is. Too Cool to be Forgotten is a $14.95 125 page hardcover book that is a great follow up to Robinson's other two graphic novels Tricked and Box Office Poison.

Too Cool to be Forgotten
is about a middle aged guy who reluctantly goes to a hypnotist to try to quit smoking and ends up in his past - 1985 high school, with his middle aged memories of his life in 2010 and the events that led him to that point intact (but he looks like he did when he was in high school). He wonders if he were to change something he did the first time as a teenager, would that change things in the future (or his former present) for the better or worse?

Whom amongst us hasn't thought about what we would do if we could relive high school and what affect would making these changes do to us and people we now know (whom we may not know if things in the past were altered)? Alex Robinson perfectly examines what a person who finds himself thrust back into time would think about and or do and as if handling this premise with so much attention wasn't enough, Robinson then goes on to construct a powerful ending of which I'm not going to say anything about because it is better upon self discovery. Too Cool to be Forgotten is one of those rare books that doesn't make one wrong turn and upon finishing reading it you'll just want to share it with others and wonder why there aren't more great comics like this.

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