The Virgin Read: Watch Out For Boxes On The Highway, They Are Full Of Knives

Rasl # 2
By Jeff Smith
Published by Cartoon Books

I don’t really know how to write this review.  I liked this comic, but not so much that I care to know what happens next.  But it peaked an interest in quantum physics…??  Weird.

I like the cover…but that little weasel-cat-faced dude on the cover does not appear in the comic.  Although, maybe it’s the person they are referring to as lizard-faced?

Anyhow-this is a raw comic.  It's chock full of sex.  We go from one girl’s apartment who, um, seems like she might be a prostitute…although the banter about doing it on “credit” and the amount of interest she takes in him and his “journey” tends to make one think they might be more going down.  But anyway, heavy flirting, followed by sex, sleep.  Discussion.  And then….off to a strip club.  Kinda weird.  I guess what grounds him in his true reality is sex…?

On my honeymoon, I read The Time Traveler's Wife.  So, when the girls says to Rasl, “You look terrible. Have you been time traveling again?”  I felt like, “Oh yeah.  People look like hell after time travelling.  Takes a lot out of them. I totally know that this is true.”  I realize this is mainly a mechanism to explain to us, the reader, that Rasl is NOT time traveling, but traveling to parallel universes and that “the two are different” – but as a device in fiction writing, are they really?   I mean, hopping different universes/times make one tired.  Makes it hard to relate to others.  Makes it difficult to have real relationships, makes life really complicated …blah, blah, blah.

Yippee ki yay.  Motherfucker. 

Interesting that the girl who doesn’t seem to know the difference between time-travel and parallel universe hopping presents him with some sort of amulet that gives him a sort of choose-your-own-adventure power over his life.  And then she is conveniently killed.  He goes and fires up his electrons in an attempt, I’m sure, to go backwards and “choose differently.”  Wisely?

So, what will he do? To what universe will he go?  Can he bring her back to life by retreating “to a safe corner [to] reassess before moving forward”?  Will that happen in the next issue.  I sure hope….

What?  Really? Buffy Season Two, Disc Two has arrived from Netflix?  Sweet! Dying to know what happens with her and Angel….

Okay, no, this is serious.  Take it seriously.  Right at the end there, when Rasl has the whole explanation about how he played with a magnet as a kid through to the very last page, I got real interested.  I got very interested in the mind of the writer and this idea of parallel universes being linked to electrons and the theory that when they flit in and out of existence that some (or someone) says that they are “actually leaking into other universes.”  This interests me.  It interests me and it is just beyond my grasp.  (Only just.)  But this indicates to me (and her I go again about the big, inherent question), that Jeff Smith has an overarching question he’s posing in writing this comic.  Again, it’s a question just outside of my grasp…but its something like, what would it be like to follow electrons to wherever they go?  What goes on wherever their destination is?  Or I guess to clarify, what would it be like to BE a human electron.  And all the questions that follow after that.  That, definitely: interesting.  Its just that in this issue, the story isn’t set up in such an interesting way that I’m on the edge of my seat to know what happens next.  But I’m a girl.  So, maybe if Rasl’s connection with that girl was more romantic than just sexual I’d want to know more.  And maybe, for guys, just that overt sexual content is enough to get them to come back for more.  I don’t really know.  But I care to know?

Anyhow…I feel like I’m babbling on, so I’m going to wrap this up.  Basically, I’d say, pick this up and read it.  I’d love to know what other people think and fell about this comic.  So feel free to let me know.

-Nina Stone, 2008

Comments

[Kenny]

I loved it, but I'm from Ohio and love Jeff Smith work, so I'm unfairly biased.

I don't think moving through time and moving through universes is really any different. I think it's all moving through the 4th dimension, right? I dunno, too many years since I read anything about physics.

I don't know the sexual nature of the relationship between RASL and the dead girl is really going to hook guys. I think the relationship was there more to show RASL is never really committed to any reality. Like, he doesn't have a woman he's committed to, he has a prostitute with emotional ties to him.

If RASL is anything like Bone, then the central question of the series won't develop for another 5 years or so and until then it will be wacky hijinks of lizard men and dead prostitutes, or something....

[JRSM]

Sorry to be an arsehole, but it's "picqued an interested", not "peaked an interested".

[Sharif]

"Sorry to be an arsehole, but it's "picqued an interested", not "peaked an interested"."

Technically, it's not even "picqued," but rather piqued. And I'm not sorry.

[tucker Stone]

Wouldn't it be "piqued an interest," without the "-ed" suffix?

[Guy Smiley]

I hate to interrupt the grammar parade (wait -- Tucker, you write great, great stuff but consistently use "then" when you mean "than." There, I SAID it. God, it's good to get that off my chest.).

I liked Rasl 2, but then, I'm from California and we love indiscriminate sex and strippers, so I'm biased.

My big concern with Rasl, other than the fear it'll eventually be about rasslin', is that at quarterly intervals, chapters won't make sense and I'll give up and wait for the trade. This one worked for me, possibly due to the page or two of "let me explain last issue, soon-to-die, gold-hearted-hooker." Which worked here, but I don't want to see that every issue (the parenthetical I'm-a-tough-bastard joke: "I meant the exposition; I'm okay with more dead hookers" but I don't really mean that).

Nina, your observation that the fairly random woman just gives him a no-doubt-magical talisman (oh, and a 30-second course in mystic journeying meditational whatsit) and then dies is really pat? Yeah, that's spot on. Didn't strike me so much when I read it, though, because I know Smith's earlier work, and this sense that the universe puts just the right obstacles and tools in the hero's path in a "Uuuuse the Forrrce, Luuuuke" kinda way is what he does. Kinda like long, run-on sentences is what I do.

The comment that Smith takes his time unfolding his main plot is a good point. The fact that Smith has emphasized that, unlike Bone, this is not meant as a kid-friendly "all ages" series, might explain all the sexin' in this issue, in a "let's get one thing clear, here," way.

Ahhh, Buffy Season Two ... especially the second half of that season, and then Season Three, so damned entertaining.

(Damn. I just scanned the site, and this then/than problem seems to have vanished, meaning I look like another pedantic fuck without even the benefit of schoolin' you. Shit, I just cannot catch a break, y'know?)

Rasl ... This issue told me that Smith has some big ideas cookin', quantum theory applied to our own brief, random, drifting lives. If, along the way, he can keep delivering interesting chapters (Last issue: Theft caper! This issue: Sex! Next issue: Cookies?), I'll be in for the haul.

[Nina]

Cookies! I love it!
I'm so happy to get your feed back Guy, Kenny, JRSM, Sharif, et al. Thank you!
As for the grammar -- I'm just tired folks. And we, TFO, just need an editor, (for the love of God!).
A passionate, detail oriented, grammar proficient editor who has lots of spare time and no desire to work for pay.
Yet.
;)