After a year spent at SUNY Brockport, he went to the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he studied under Will Eisner, Sal Amendola, Gahan Wilson, and Carmine Infantino.

Robinson's first major work was Box Office Poison, originally serialized by Antarctic Press and then collected into graphic novel form in 2001 by Top Shelf Productions.

Box Office Poison concerns the life and trials of a group of young people in New York City (the central protagonist works in a bookstore, a job Robinson himself held for seven years.

Along with Mike Dawson, Tony Consiglio, and a few other cartoonists, Robinson is part of a loosely associated collective called The Ink Panthers.

In addition, the French translation of the book (titled De Mal en Pis) won the Prix Du Premier Album at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2005.