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Review: RASL Complete Coloured Edition

RASL, Jeff Smith's science fiction tale has more twists and turns than a Tesla generator. Plenty of action, not a small amount of intrigue, a healthy dose of science and of course Smith's beautiful and emotive art. The one volume, coloured edition brings it all together in a beautiful synergy.

Rasl is a scientist turned dimension-hopping art thief whose work revolves around that of the great inventor/engineer/physicist Nikola Tesla. After a devastating accident, Rasl decides his work is too dangerous and goes on the run.

One of the best parts about the book are the two main characters – Rasl himself, and the antagonist, Sal Crow. Rasl is one of those characters that you just can’t help liking. He’s got a roguish charm, and the fact that he got his education at the school of hard knocks makes him the loveable underdog. Crow, on the other hand, is sinister and mysterious. We don’t know what he wants or why, but we know he’s after Rasl and that’s enough to know this guy is up to no good.

Smith’s art is, as always, powerful and expressive. A veteran of visual storytelling, he can create so much power and emotion from a single panel. He varies his line thickness perfectly, and uses the simple black and white contrasts to create great tone and texture. He communicates Rasl’s pain, his determination and stubbornness, even his surprise and shock, with seeming ease. Bold lines juxtapose softer scratch-like texture, while the backgrounds ground the action firmly in it’s setting. Rasl is nothing like Bone, but it has a distinct Jeff Smith feel.

Smith is one of the rare artists who’s work doesn’t need colour to provide depth in tone or mood. Having said that the colours look great – they make rich, expressive art look even more rich and expressive. The book itself has that special balance between being easy to handle and read, but still looking mighty impressive on the bookshelf.

Nikola Tesla has always been a nerd icon, but over the past few years his popularity has increased to fanboy adoration levels. RASL celebrates that with beauty, mystery and intrigue. It is, of course, not perfect – while the ending is satisfying – excellent even – it frustratingly leaves us with a bunch of unanswered questions. I can deal with that, however, as RASL truly is a triumph of the medium.

Gunslinger Girl Omnibus 1: Review...

Gunslinger Girl Omnibus 1

Yu Aida

Seven Seas Entertainment

Gunslinger Girl is probably one the most brutal and intriguing fictional worlds. Taking place in modern day Italy, where the Social Welfare Agency rescues young girls who suffered some sort of traumatic event, and brainwashes them to be elite killers for the Italian government.

That’s pretty much the premise of this manga series. The series was created by Yu Aida and first appeared in the Japanese magazine Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh in 2002, and ended last year. Henrietta is the main protagonist of the story. She’s a young girl who survived a gruesome crime, in which, she was brutalized for hours, and her parents and siblings were killed. The S.W.A took Henrietta in and made her into one of the elite assassins in the agency.

By far this manga excels in both the story and in the artwork, but yet, there‘s still some minor problems. The story does move at a sluggish pace, which can turn away readers, but it’s worth it with all of the great character development and world building. All of the action scenes feel like storyboards to a John Woo film, but yet, Aida occasionally has this tendency to sneak in some panty shots of the young girls during these scenes, which is unnecessary and tasteless. All of the character and weapons/mechanical designs are very detailed and have an unique style to them, that‘s suitable for this title.

Gunslinger Girl is a fascinating title with a lot of action and over the top violence jam-packed in the first omnibus volume. It won’t appeal to everyone with moe designs and the (dark) mature content, but the story is strong enough to keep readers glued to every page. With over 500 pages and a price of less than twenty dollars, it’s worth to give Gunslinger Girl a try. -Panagiotis Drakopoulos