REVIEW: RASL #1

February 29, 2008 on 9:20 pm | In Reviews

RASL #1
By Jeff Smith
Cartoon Books, $3.50

I’ve got a new favorite comic.
Jeff Smith, the WORLD renowned comic book creator behind Bone and Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil debuted his most recent venture this past week through his own Cartoon Books—RASL.
RASL is the story of a dimension-hopping art thief—who we currently know as RASL—whose reality-defying exploits finally catch up with him. RASL mysteriously alludes to “The Drift” in this first issue as his means for traveling though realities, and talks about how it’s starting to take to take a lot out of him physically. We also find out that his way of traversing “The Drift” is getting less reliable (when we see that he lands in an alternate reality that he thought would be his own) and someone, that RASL is aware of, has gotten smart to his system and has sent an assassin after him. For the cherry on top, the book opens and ends with a flash-forward of RASL, bloody and beaten wandering the desert.

And there you have it—an incredibly enticing sci-fi mystery read. Smith puts just enough cards on the table to get you interested. SOMETHING bad is eventually going to happen to this guy. In the “present” it’s a double-edged sword of intrigue watching RASL march toward his fate while Smith slowly reveals secrets about this universe. It’s probably going to get pretty interesting when Smith, a self proclaimed fan of theoretical physics, gets more into the technology and science, but for now its just fun to let your mind wander as Smith throws all these crazy elements at you. Like what is that machine? What is that mask RASL is wearing? What is that thing he notices poking out of the assassins arm? What is up with that assassins face?!? That moment where he slithers around that corner freaked me out. You can tell he’s there as you see the page as a whole, but following the panels sequentially gave me jump—like that scene in Mulholland Drive where the homeless guy appears from behind the dumpster (sounds random, but see the movie). And speaking of the art, Smith really is at the top of his game here. Whether it’s the sense of movement in the chase scene or his attention to detail in the desert scenes —everything is perfectly in place.

While it will always be rough waiting for new issues (RASL is currently on a quarterly schedule) what’s presented to me here has more than enough promise to pay out in the long run. Smith is a proven creator and it’s a lot of fun to get to see him stretch out his creative muscles.