Several years ago, I was working at the “Poultry and Game”, a small shop in the North Market that sold self-described goods. Jeff Smith and his wife and business partner, Vijaya, were regular customers. I had read and loved BONE and, over the course of several customer service interactions, got to know Jeff and Vijaya superficially. Jeff knew I aspired to write comics. One day, Jeff brought in two large books, placed the first on the wobbly corner top table then drew a picture and signed it. The book was RASL. Jeff Smith, an icon in the field of comics, gave signed books to an aspiring comic writer that sold him his chicken. May we all aspire to be as gracious and kind a person as him.
The first thing you recognize about RASL is the size. The book is one foot tall and nine inches across. A type of book that will only fit on your bottom shelf with the cookbooks. The majority of the pages are done in four panels. With the large pages and few panels, your eyes are engulfed with the linework and allow you space to drink in the textures of the art. You can feel the heat of the desert through the slick skin of the sweating characters. You can feel the jagged texture of every rockface and the bloody nose of every fight. The space, the timing, and the texture drive you at top speed into the world of this sci-fi/detective story.
Rob is an art thief able to jump dimensions. The protagonist was described by the late Tom Spurgeon as having a “Steve McQueen-like intensity.” He’s steely eyed, distrusting, innovative and always cool under pressure. Rob’s affection is divided between two women. Annie, a prostitute, and Maya, the wife of his science partner. As copies of these women seem to exist in multiple dimensions, each slightly different than the original, Rob is unable to protect them all as they’re targeted and hunted down by a haunting looking government agent named Sal.
We’re also introduced to two side characters that can, at times, steal the show. There’s the fast talking homeless man known as “The President of the Street” and his mute companion known as “the little girl.” The little girl seems to be holding a secret for Rob and appears across time as a soft voyeur for his escapades across the Drift.
Though the book is a departure from the all ages famed BONE, Smith is able to incorporate the hallmarks of the classic noir genre while seamlessly blending in a sci-fi narrative of corrupt scientists, dimension hopping, and the true life events of Nikola Tesla and his effect on two young fictional scientists that spend their life chasing his dream.
Though the pace of the book is perfectly timed, you can sometimes feel like you’re struggling to keep up with what timeline our character is living in and which version of which character is talking. I’m sure Rob felt the same way. As time proceeds, Smith drops you into horrifying experiments gone wrong and even illustrates the mind-bending experience of watching what happens when dimensions collapse into each other.
The blending of real and fictional life is a constant tool used by storytellers to help draw you in. However, while you’re traveling down this rabbit hole of dimensions, it’s easy to see that this story could be real life in a dimension not too far away from our own. I highly recommend you pick up your copy at boneville.com or ask for it at your local comic shop.