It’s day seven of BOOM! Studios’s Road to San Diego spotlight, and today the publisher has announced a new heist-centric series from the screenwriter of Legally Blonde and 10 Things I Hate About You. Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith will team with co-writer Kurt Lustgarten (as they did on BOOM!’s “Misfit City“) and artist Leisha Riddel to tell the story of two “Smooth Criminals,” an action-filled buddy comedy set in the 1990s.
“With ‘Smooth Criminals,’ we want to tell a female friendship story wrapped in a jewel heist,” said Smith and Lustgarten, in a The Hollywood Reporter article detailing the new series. “We want to explore the idea that women of different eras and different backgrounds can accomplish true change by working together in a world where anachronistic rules are meant to be broken.”
When Smith and Lustgarten say their story will star women from different eras, they aren’t kidding. The series will follow ’90s computer hacker Brenda as she discovers a cryogenically frozen master thief from the 1960s, named Mia. Recognizing a kindred spirit, Brenda teams up with Mia to figure out how the thief wound up frozen in the first place, and also to pull off the greatest heist the 1990s have ever seen.
“I’m very excited to work on ‘Smooth Criminals,’ as someone who identifies as a woman of color, creating characters that are closer to who I am is always great,” said Riddel, explaining what led her to take on the series. “The story is a bit sci-fi, and a bit action, but still relatable as a coming of age, which is a recipe for everything I’m all about.”
“Smooth Criminals”‘s first issue will release in November, featuring a standard cover by Audrey Mok (seen above) and a variant by Chynna Clugston Flores. To see character designs from Flores and learn more about the series, head over to The Hollywood Reporter.
