Cartoon Books has released a 10-page color preview of the hardcover collection of RASL, Jeff Smith's sci-fi noir series about a dimension-hopping art thief. The comic, his first major work following Bone, was originally serialized in black and white over 15 issues from 2008 to 2012.

"[Doing the Bone books in color] did give me more confidence," Smith told CBR TV in April at WonderCon. "It also made me think color sells a lot. There's a lot of people really attracted to the color. So, I kept Bone in black and white because that's what I really like, and Scholastic does the color versions. Now, I'm self-publishing RASL again, but I wanted to explore color with it on my own. I got Steve [Hamaker, Bone colorist] back and we discussed -- it's got a noir-ish, hard-boiled feel to it, so it can't be the same thing as Bone. It's not a fantasy, it's not a comedy and we worked really hard. We struggled for months until we came up with a palette that was very rich and very smoky and very different from Bone, and yet it is actually better than the black and white. I've very happy with it."

The 472-page RASL hardcover can be pre-ordered now for release in September.