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- Issue: 1
- Authors: Alex Robinson
- Publisher: Top Shelf
- Price: $6.95
ALEX ROBINSON’S LOWER REGIONS #1
Attack the Gazebo By
Kurt Amacker
November 30, 2007
ALEX ROBINSON’S LOWER REGIONS #1 by Alex Robinson
© Top Shelf
With this short, silent, standalone mini-graphic-novel, Alex Robinson invites you to explore his Lower Regions. I heard great things about Robinson and his Lower Regions, so I thought I’d check them out. There’s a lot going on in those Lower Regions! I mean, a hot chick swings a bloody axe, monsters appear and die just as quickly, men turn to monsters, children turn to demons, and more! I can’t keep this up. Yes, Alex Robinson – the writer and artist behind the critically acclaimed Box Office Poison and its semi-sequel, Tricked – has created a silent mini-comic chronicling one woman’s struggle with the forces of monster-hood against the backdrop of an endless dungeon. Effectively, Robinson has illustrated a very short Dungeons & Dragons adventure that serves as both a tribute and a parody. In this world, the monsters come in hoards, the child you save may turn on you – or turn you into something – and wounds can be healed with magic bottles of water.
It’s all very cute and, as a silent comic, a breeze to read. The absence of dialogue actually makes Alex Robinson’s Lower Regions more clever than one might think. While D&D and RPG parodies remain common enough, Robinson puts his female protagonist through an adventure that could easily occur on a Friday night game. It’s not terribly involved, but it doesn’t step outside of what one might find in the average dungeon crawl. But, with the dialogue removed, it forces the reader to examine the hilarity of, say, restoring the burned half of one’s face with a bottle of magic water. But, Robinson’s parody comes off as gentle. Any gamer that recognizes the inherent – or inadvertent – comic qualities of many tabletop D&D sessions should appreciate Robinson’s Lower Regions all the more. Appreciate them. Appreciate them now.
Seriously, though, Robinson remains a huge name in independent comics because of his previous two graphic novels. Lower Regions serves as a surprising, but funny departure from both Box Office Poison and Tricked. While it will probably resonate more with gamers than fans of slice-of-life independent comics, it’s worth a look.
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