Hey youse guys! Ian here. I’m hijacking this show with a completely arbitrary and unsolicited article. Ta-daa! Let’s roll!
A few Wednesdays ago I had a pretty decent pull list, but one title in particular really tore the roof off my head(?) and that comic book was Jeff Smith’s RASL #6. Now, I’m not one of these mafkers who thinks the sun rises and sets with Jeff Smith. Everyone loves ‘Bone,’ right? I’ll be the first guy to agree that it was an epic feat of illustration, but ultimately I thought ‘Bone’ was the longest and most boring story I’ve sat through since the last time Nuv and Steve the Janitor were all blah-blah-blah about football.
So what makes RASL #6 so excellent? Well the fact that it almost wholly departs from the main story in order to tell the weird and wonderful tale of Nikola Tesla. For those not in the know, Tesla was a Serbian immigrant who came to the United States in 1884 and made a name for himself as one of the leading pioneers of alternating current (AC) electricity. You know, the stuff that comes out of your wall as opposed to the stuff that comes out of batteries (DC). A massive and visionary thinker, Tesla infuriated his contemporaries – including Thomas Edison – by viewing applied electricity in terms of how it could better society, rather than how much money could be made. This rift would become the basis for a brutal and often horrifying standards war involving a bunch of dead animals, ruined lives and ultimately the electric chair. All of which is covered by Jeff Smith in issue #6.
Before he became a time-travelling art thief, RASL (real name Robert Joseph Johnson) was a physicist working on teleportation and time travel based on the more obscure theories of Nikola Tesla. Now his life is a disaster of alternate universes, wayward time-travel, and dangerous confrontations with the mysterious Lizard-Faced Man. Sound crazy? It is! However, I would argue that you don’t need to know much about this title, about comic books, or even about Tesla to pick up this issue and still be in for an amazing self-contained story.
Jeff Smith’s art is as bold as ever and page after page features illustrations that are epic in scope. In what other single issue will you see Frankenstein, crazy-ass mountaintop lightning, a circus elephant, a Picasso, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and Niagara Falls? This title doesn’t come out very often – about once every couple of months or so – but it is consistently worth the wait. Unlike Nuv, who comes around too often and isn’t worth his weight in anything.
Put one in the air…
– Ian
NEXT ISSUE: SYLVESTER + HARVEY + RAY + ROB + ROB + PETE + MIKE = ????
THE BIG TWO GET ON THE SAME PAGE, LITERALLY & FIGURATIVELY.
TUNE IN: SAME IAN-TIME, SAME NUV-CHANNEL.
“….since the last time Nuv and Steve the Janitor were all blah-blah-blah about football.” <– hahahahahahahahahahaha