RASL - Development

Development

Jeff Smith has stated that RASL came from a desire to do something completely different from his previous work Bone. He came up with the idea in 1999 during the process of inking Bone. He would watch films like Blade Runner and the Bourne film series and was interested how these movies could come together. Smith then talked to cartoonists Paul Pope and Frank Miller about the idea and gained support. Smith postponed his idea on RASL as to complete Bone. In 2007, after Bone had been completed, Smith came back to the idea of RASL. Smith had an idea of how the story would end and what would happen but needed to organize it into a full fledged story. He flew out to Arizona as he knew that part of the story would happen in the desert. He found the quiet and heat helped his ideas of the story and characters come to life. Smith was also interested in the visual aspects of film noir. Intense angles, heavy shadows, and a sense of discomfort. He then spent a year researching the latest in the theories of physics, M-theory, and string theory from the work of Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, and Carl Sagan to get a feel of what scientist believe is happening with parallel worlds. He self-published the series through his publishing company Cartoon Books.