The most popular publisher for me other than Marvel or DC tends to rotate. When this blog started, it was Digital Webbing. It was probably Red 5 during the years they were publishing Atomic Robo. It had been Scout Comics the last few years, but that appears to be ending. From 2017-2019, it was Boom!, on the strength of 3 series. We looked at Coda in 2020, and Giant Days in 2022. Which just leaves Smooth Criminals.
Brenda, a computer science major in 1999, is tasked with cleaning out a storage room and finds a weird tube in the back. Inside the tube is a lady, frozen, who quickly becomes unfrozen thanks to Brenda's curiosity. Said extremely agile lady turns out to be Mia Corsair, jewel thief extraordinaire, not seen in 30 years.
For lack of anything else to hang onto, Mia decides to try and finish the job she was preparing for when she got put on ice, stealing the Net of Indra (see above image.) Brenda, for lack of anything else to do, and really wanting a friend, offers to help with all the hacking and technical requirements, seeing as Mia is decades out of date on that stuff.
The mini-series ran 8 issues, but I would swear it was originally solicited as 12 issues. And you can see it in the pacing. The series spends a lot of time on Mia trying and failing to get past Talky Bears, since their motion sensors are a decent substitute for what she'll face in the heist. Or on a former rival of Mia's, who is still young in some way that doesn't involve becoming a Popsicle, getting subtle digs from his two henchmen. There's a lot of humor and character interaction between Brenda and Mia revolving around Mia not knowing about video games, or Friends, or Brenda only having online friends.
But there's a romantic subplot for Brenda that gets rushed, and a subplot for Mia and her mother (who was herself a thief, and has been in prison for decades) that feels like there's was going to be more to it. Mia's rival is after the Net of Indra as well, plus he clearly has issues with his wife that are barely tapped.
There's a decidedly blitzed through team up and a big fight that gets crammed into a 16-panel page that doesn't do Riddel any favors. There's just no room to really let what should, in some way, be Mia's big moment of payback for the 30 years she lost, breathe. But it feels like the book was leaning towards a "steal from the thief," ending and had to go straight to a fight because it was faster. Riddel's art is loose enough to allow for exaggeration, and can generally handle Mia's acrobatics, when Mia gets the opportunity to show off a bit.
I really would have liked to see this book with a full 12 issues, assuming I didn't just hallucinate that notion.
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