new comic series help ring in the spring

Birds aren’t singing and flowers aren’t blooming quite yet, but a handful of new comic book series are starting to sprout up in shops. Here’s a look at some notable new releases.

Writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips’ collaboration on “Criminal” has arguably resulted in some of the best crime fiction being published today. A sort of anthology series featuring a rotating cast of thieves, gangsters, hit-men and other unsavory types, “Criminal” tackled a twisty-turny heist tale in its first story arc in 2006 and a bloody revenge drama in its second arc before going on a brief hiatus. Brubaker and Phillips relaunched “Criminal” late in February, with a brand new first issue and a slightly different format. This time around, each issue of “Criminal” focuses on a single character instead of the longer story arcs that characterized its first volumes.

The latest issue details the life of Gnarly Brown, a former boxer turned bar owner. The combination of Brubaker’s writing and Phillips’ art hits like a surprise jab, quick and hard, with a sting that lasts long after the punch is thrown. Gnarly, a black boxer who worked his way up the pro circuit in the early 1970s, finds himself at odds with Sebastian Hyde, a childhood friend who is rising through the ranks of his father’s criminal empire. Both characters must deal with the reappearance of Danica Briggs, a femme fatale who ensnared both of them in a tragic triangle years earlier. Brubaker’s sharp, hardboiled prose has a steady undercurrent of sadness, which is matched perfectly with Phillips’ dark, moody artwork and colorist Val Staples’ muted, muddy tones.

“Criminal” is a love letter to crime fiction, a fact made apparent by the essays on film noir and old pulp novels that Brubaker and some of his friends pen for the back of each issue. But the comic stands confidently on its own.

Writer/artist David Lapham’s new DC/Vertigo series “Young Liars” also explores some seedy underworld territory, albeit with a killer pop-rock soundtrack and a cast of outrageous characters. “Young Liars” follows the hard-rocking, punch-throwing adventures of Sadie Browning, a runaway rich girl with a bullet lodged in her brain. After fleeing Texas with her friend Donny to escape her father, the owner of a chain of Wal-Mart-like stores, Sadie meets up with a group of dysfunctional misfits in New York. The bullet in her brain has turned her into an adrenaline junkie with a bad memory and a lack of typical emotional responses. Sadie believes that one of her friends—either a pampered rich boy, an anorexic waitress, a slutty band groupie or an unhappy transvestite—was responsible for putting the bullet in her head, but she doesn’t know which one pulled the trigger. Meanwhile, her crazy father is scouring the country for her, convinced that she’ll spill secrets that would ruin his company’s wholesome image.

“Liars” starts out with a punch in the face—literally—as Sadie beats up a guy who was giving her friend a hard time. Lapham, best known for his self-published series “Stray Bullets,” handles both the writing and art on “Young Liars,” and the first issue is a promising debut. Lapham’s art is snappy and kinetic and invests a sense of rollicking motion in the characters, especially Sadie. Story-wise, it’s a rather exposition-dense first issue, with Donny tossing out explanations left and right about Sadie’s condition and their weird friends. But when Sadie is front and center, dancing and fighting her way across the page, the book rockets along.

Cartoonist Jeff Smith returned to monthly comics in March with the first issue of “RASL.” Smith’s first independent work since he wrapped up his previous series, “Bone,” in 2004, “RASL” (pronounced “rassle”) is about an art thief who uses a bizarre-looking assortment of technology to hop between dimensions. After lifting a priceless Picasso from a high-rise apartment, RASL hops back to what he thinks is his home dimension. But, after seeing a Robert Zimmerman—not Bob Dylan—album in the jukebox, RASL discovers that he has entered the wrong world. A lizard-faced man wearing a trench coat and packing heat shows up and chases RASL, who realizes someone has finally caught on to his game.

Smith’s art in “RASL” is a treat. His style is clean and simple, a little cartoon-ish with a light manga influence. RASL is a narrator of few words, and Smith lets the art do most of the talking, propelling the reader along fast enough to forego questions about what’s going on. Smith reveals just enough to keep you hooked, but this debut issue could have been a little meatier. It feels like the action is over too soon, and it may turn out that “RASL” will read better as a graphic novel than as a series of issues.