Straight out of the BOOM Box comes Smooth Criminals, issue one. Two young women inhabit the cover. What’s inside?
The co-creators and cowriters Kurt Lustgarten and Kirsten Smith join up with Leisha Riddel on art and Brittany Peer on colors.
The issue starts in San Francisco in 1999: we catch a trolley and catch up with Brenda Ospina, on her way to work. It’s 1999, and she’s having another bad day. Her bad Archie-lookalike boss is being bad. She is relegated to cleaning out an old Sciences Wing to make way for new servers. When there, she makes a startling discovery. Brenda, female hacker, meets another young woman from the past! It’s female friendship galore!
I’ll leave it there for you to discover and enjoy. This is a thoroughly readable book and maintains reader interest throughout. It’s got retro dialogue suitably “1999ed”, and enough other 1999 references to reassure us that we ARE in 1999. It’s fun in that aspect, though we might wonder why the authors have decided to place this story 20 years in the past. Oh well, it’s fun and perhaps the retro atmosphere is fun to explore.
With hints of manga in the character expressions and panel design, this nicely rendered and coloured book is starting off just right!
BOOM Comics, Smooth Criminals #1, $3.99 for 25 pages of content. Assume Teen rating
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