I can’t believe it’s taken us this long to get to Jeff Smith’s epic, Bone. If you grew up patroning comic stores in the 90’s, like I did, you are probably already familiar with the artwork of Bone. I remember seeing issues and posters of the little bald white cartoon characters set against a fantasy world backdrop on the shelves and walls of my local comic shop. Maybe I was more prone to seeing Smith’s work, growing up in Columbus, Ohio, as that is where he works and resides to this day. But regardless of where you reside, Bone has become an international hit and independent comic book success story.
For this review I focused on the first collected volume, Out of Boneville, which brings together the first six issues of the series, this time in full color. The book quickly throws you into the world of Fone Bone and his cousins, Smiley Bone and Phoney Bone, as they have recently been chased out of their hometown of Boneville due to some unspecified shady dealings on Phoney’s part. The group is quickly separated, and spend months apart in a picturesque fantasy world landscape, complete with a dragon, talking bugs of varying height, and dumb but dangerous rat creatures. Each Bone cousin engages in their own adventure before being reunited just as the book ends, with Fone Bone being our main protagonist and point of entry into this world.
Jeff Smith has said he is inspired by Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn as well as the fantasy worlds of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. He really has a handle on what makes fantasy/adventure worlds work. I remember the first time I read through this book feeling a sense of fear when our heroes encounter the aforementioned rat creatures. Perhaps it’s a combination of the artwork and character behavior, but the creatures fill the page with a malevolence that really captures the danger of this world Bone inhabits.
The artwork looks like it is pre-made to be an animated feature, as if you are looking at cartoon storyboards, which makes a lot of sense when you consider that Smith, along with some friends, once did animation work on commission through their own Character Builder Studios. Every detail of each panel, from characters to backgrounds is so vibrant, it’s like reading a fully realized cartoon. The character design of the Bone cousins is simple yet expressive, while being unique yet familiar. I couldn’t put my finger on what it reminded me of until I read that Smith was influenced by Walt Kelly’s Pogo. Even looking at just one page, it’s hard to believe it hasn’t been commissioned to be an animated series or movie, although it has been in some form of development since the late 90’s.
With Smith’s grasp on how to build characters and what makes fantasy so effective, it’s no wonder Time magazine has referred to Bone as “the best all-ages graphic novel yet published.” It truly is a wonderful escape for readers of all ages.