There’s no funny, little, big-nosed guys running around in this book.
Jeff Smith easily established himself as a talented and gifted cartoonist with Bone. Thanks to my son’s recent enjoyment of Fone Bone, his cousins and Thorn, I’ve been enjoying reading to him every night from Scholastics great versions of Bone. This has really been a rediscovery of Smith for me as I remembered really enjoying the story but memory and time had dulled its impact. Reading it now, I’m amazed at how well my son picks up on obvious tricks that Smith employs (like every time you actually see Gran’ma Ben and Lucius’s eyes) that I probably just glossed over when originally reading those issues.
Smith does the only thing he could probably have done as his major followup to Bone (not counting a short Shazam story) and does something completely different. RASL‘s story about a dimension and time hopping art thief is far away from the pastoral, epic fantasy he created with Bone. There’s not much in the way of story here in this first issue; it’s all about the energy and emotion Smith can get out of the visuals and narration or than explaining everything that’s happening in the very first issue. All you really need to know that it’s a art theft that’s gone wrong. Actually, the theft part went fine; it’s everything after that’s wrong as the thief accidentally escapes into a different dimension where he’s hunted down by a mysterious figure
In this first issue of RASL, Smith is introducing the main character and situation but doesn’t dwell on it. Unlike too many corporate comics that take the first 6 issues to actually set everything up and feel like they’re being padded for the eventual trade, Smith’s story feels just right, borrowing pacing tricks from manga to set this up as a true first chapter of a much longer story. A couple of times in the book, Smith concentrates on a pebble being thrown into a puddle of water. But he alternates panels showing the pebble with panels of the thief and his latest heist job. Panels with the pebble are like watching a series of still photos of a similar event. It’s meticulous and it controls the pace at which you read the story. While it’s easy to breeze through the story of the robbery, you have to slow down to follow the decent and splash of the pebble.
In his recent Shazam book from DC, Smith didn’t alter his tone that much from what he did on Bone. The child-like innocent subtext of Bone is present throughout Shazam. There’s nothing child-like or innocent about RASL. From the beginning, this book is harsh, beaten up and surprisingly urban with its setting. It’s not the complete opposite of Bone but it’s close to being that. I think with how long he worked on Bone and how popular it still is, it’s easy to stereotype Smith into doing only work reminiscent of Bone. It’s wonderful to see a cartoonist whose work you think you know do something completely different.
RASL #1
Chapter 1
Writtenn and Drawn by: Jeff Smith