Publisher: Cartoon Books

Reviewed by: Jonny Botsch

Jeff Smith made a name for himself as an independent publisher of comics in the nineties by drawing and writing the fantasy epic called Bone. The series has gone on to critical acclaim and fan love around the world. In the past year his nine volumes of Bone have been digitally colored and reissued in smaller and more affordable digests by Scholastic, which is giving the series a second wind. Outside of Bone however, the creator has done very little. The only real work of note is a Shazam book entitled the Monster Society of Evil, which was pretty cool.

Now back at the drawing board and starting his new series, there was a lot of anticipation and wonder as to what kind of book it would be. Here, in the first volume (an unconventional oversized book) are the makings of a dry and fairly uninteresting story. The criticism may be unfair at this time however, due to the book only collecting three issues! Each issue does contain more pages than an average issue of other comic series, but this story is off to a slow and grinding start.

The artwork is almost as good as his other work, but remains an ill-fitting companion to an adult (or at least mature) book. The story could be slow to accommodate for a larger arc which does seem possible from the first three issues. We may only be at the start of the RASL story but the cereal has gone soggy already.