Years ago I bought an issue of Bone. I had no idea what it was, I just knew it looked really cool. The problem was, I never read it. Oh the missed joys I could have had…
Bone is like a magical gem hidden in a deceptively simple-looking cave. So simple-looking, in fact, that I think I mistook it for childish at first. (It doesn’t help that it can be found in the Young Adult section of bookstores.) I don’t think I’ve ever been more pleasantly surprised.
From the outset, Bone is about three simply drawn characters called Bones (from Boneville, of course) who have been run out of town because of the hair-brained scheme of Phoney Bone. He and his two cousins Fone Bone and Smiley Bone embark on a crazy journey through an uncharted desert… Then the locusts come, and the story is off and running. They’re separated and in a world populated by humans, talking animals, monstrous rat creatures, legends of secret societies, dragons and prophecies of great evil vowing revenge!
Whether you get the volumes or the complete tome, you will read it quickly. Every page is humorous and a mini-cliffhanger. It keeps you turning the pages and barely lets you set it down before you’re curious what’s to come next. Jeff Smith is someone that I want to emulate for years to come. As a creator, the book showed me that you could write a story that was engaging on every page, had a punchline on every page and it didn’t grow old. As a reader, it was great laughing on nearly every page, and at the least smiling. Smith has a command of the timing, pace and placement of his pages that is very enjoyable for a reader.
The art is fantastic too. Smith’s style seems very simplistic, but at the same time, perfectly detailed. It’s somewhat hard to explain exactly, but what it boils down to is that you have a great sense of the depth of the scene, the landscape, and the tone of the story without ever losing focus of what’s most important in every scene. He’s got a way of making the characters stand out from the backgrounds that doesn’t rely on colors, but just with simple linework. Now, all this talk of simplicity is not to say that he isn’t amazing at the details. He saves them for the things that need them most. Humans, for instance, are more detailed than the Bones, and older people are highly detailed with every crease and wrinkle carefully placed.
This whole thing was like a paradise of great storytelling, fantastic (in every sense of the word) art, and every page was a learning experience on how to be better at comics overall. I can’t wait to do my review of his graphic novel series, RASL!
Since there are 9 books total for this story, I’ve made the link below a little different. There are tons of ways to get this book: Complete collection, separate books, and the complete and colored collection! For this review, I read the complete one-volume version in black and white.
