Bone: One Volume Edition (2004)

Three Bones, Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone, are run out of Boneville after Phoney Bone tries to pull a scam on the townspeople. They get separated in a desert. Fone Bone, the most honest of the bunch, eventually finds marooned in a beautiful valley. All is not as peaceful as it appears, however. There are rat creatures trying to eat Fone Bone and an enigmatic dragon who keeps saving his skin.

This has potential, but it didn't really get anywhere in this first installment. I had more questions when I finished it than I did when I started it. I can't think of one question that got answered. That's the biggest reason I rated this three stars.

I did like the artwork. It reminded me of the cartoons I watched as a child.

I don't really have anything else to say. I don't feel like I know enough about what's going on to add anything else.

Readers more patient than I am will probably like this more than I did. I just want to have something explained. ( )

Il volume raccoglie tutta la storia dei cugini Bone che, scacciati da Boneville, si trovano in una valle inesplorata e in un'avventura per riportare la pace.
E' decisamente bello per vari motivi, tra cui i personaggi, i Bone con i loro caratteri estremi (quello buono, quello avido e quello che vuole divertirsi), gli abitanti del villaggio più o meno saggi, gli animaletti della foresta, le stupide creature ratto (e il loro amore per le quiches) e il drago.
Contiene elementi di assoluto divertimento e altri più drammatici, tutti rappresentati con un tratto netto che fa risaltare i cugini Bone in questo mondo in cui sono ospiti.
Ho apprezzato la storia, i disegni, le parti comiche e quelle serie, decisamente consigliato.

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The book contains the whole story of the Bone cousins expelled from Boneville, who discover a valley and begin an adventure to bring again peace.
I liked the graphic novel for different reason, among which the characters; the Bone with defined nature (the good, the greedy and the smiley one), the village inhabitants, the forest animals, the stupid rat creatures (and their love for quiches) and the dragon.
The novel contain moments of absolute fun and more dramatic ones; the drawing is always precise and helps in bringing out the Bone in this new world in which they are guests.
I liked a lot the story, the drawings, the comical and the dramatic moments; a must read. ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

It was through CCLaP critic Oriana Leckert's write-up for her Jugs & Capes essay series last year (book version finally coming next week!) that first brought Jeff Smith's epic comic Bone to my attention, plus of course the fevered recommendations I'd sometimes hear from the edges of the comics-loving crowd around me; so when the Chicago Public Library recently acquired a copy of the full 1,500-page omnibus edition, I thought it was finally time for me to sit down and check it out myself. And oh, am I glad I did, for all the passionate fanboy things you hear about it is true; done by a guy who grew up with dual obsessions for Walt Kelly's Pogo and JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, it's a massive saga that combines both, the tale of three silly cartoon characters from "the next universe over" who stumble one day into the middle of a realistically drawn fantasy epic among the neighbors they never knew they had. So as such, then, there are a whole number of things going on here to admire, that don't sound like they'd go together in one book but somehow do -- the surrealistic expressive perfection of such 1930s cartoons as Krazy Kat and early Disney, the sweeping landscapes of representational drawing, a contemporary sensibility when it comes to dramatic highlights, all married to a story complex enough for a 1,500 page narrative -- and while I'm not a particularly obsessive fan of either Pogo or Lord of the Rings, I sure found myself becoming one of Smith's attempt to bring them together, a project that can be equally loved in a subtle, knowing way by adults (think of the difference between watching Chuck Jones at ten versus thirty) and in a straightforward, surface-level way by the actual ten-year-olds. (And indeed, in what has come as a shock to the indie-zinester creator, one of Bone's largest audiences has turned out to be actual kids, so much so that Scholastic recently paid a hefty sum for the reprint rights, and are spending the next decade re-publishing the entire run now in full color and marketed directly to pre-teens.)

So then flush with heady excitement over this new find, I also pulled up on Netflix a documentary that's been made about Smith and the Bone phenomenon, 2009's The Cartoonist; although I'm happy to report that it turns out to be about a lot more than just that, in reality a great overlook at the entire indie-comics explosion that happened in the 1990s, everything from confessional art-school kids to a new superhero publisher, all the way to such hard-to-classify projects as Bone or Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. It turns out that Smith was part of a little clique of self-publishing cartoonists back then, who banded together in various smart ways in order to help each other stay afloat -- sharing expenses at conventions, promoting each other's work -- making this not just a narrow film about the comic itself and how it came about (although there's plenty of that too, including the revelation that Smith has been casually doodling the "Bone" characters since literally a child, and that in high school and college he really did put them through a series of adventures in their own world that are only briefly referenced in this newest epic), but also a bigger documentary about the DIY spirit, the changing face of small business, the trials and tribulations of self-publishing, and a lot more. Granted, the production values are not high -- it features lots of talking head shots, lots of personal offices being used as set backgrounds, and all the other things one associates with cheap quickie docs found in many DVD extras -- but the content more than makes up for it, especially when coming right on the heels of reading the book for the first time like I did. Both come very strongly recommended. ( )

http://andalittlewine.blogspot.com/2012/05/book-review-bone-by-jeff-smith-spoile...

I've been reading Bone by Jeff Smith for the last 2 years.

Dear friends of mine owns a copy, and I'd stay with them every other weekend while teaching a Spring course at a nearby college. We'd play board games, entertain their toddlers, and then once everyone was tucked into bed I'd read another 20 or 30 pages of Bone.

I didn't know anything about it, other than that my friend liked it. So as I read, I was trying to figure out who it was written for...

The plot is fairly straight-forward: the 3 cousins have been chased out of town because Phoney's latest get rich scheme has failed. They get separated in the desert and each make their way into the Valley. The Valley is under attack by rat creatures, who are the first wave of an invading army. The Bones link up with an extraordinary family, and together they save the day. In between, there are a lot of sub-plots and schemes that reinforce the light shading of the characters (Fone Bone is smart and focused though a bit prone to boring lecture, Smiley Bone is gullible, Phoney Bone is greedy and covetous) while ultimately doing little to advance the over-all plot arc.

The backstory, however is vastly more complex. Much like Lord of the Rings, Bone hums with a history and mythology that the reader and even most of the characters are unaware of. This leads to the sort of sudden escapes and unexpected plot twists that I expect from a fantasy epic.

This weighty mythology can, at times, give certain moments a deus ex machina feel. Oh, the villain has added what power? Ah, our heroine can do that now too?

Throughout much of Bone, Smith keeps his touch light- the romance, the fighting, and the dialogue roll along with a humorous PG-rating, a kid-friendly mix of slapstick and verbal gags. That's contrasted though with a few more PG-13 issues: Smiley Bone smokes a cigar throughout most of the comic, characters die (though most of those deaths happen "off screen"), there's plenty of beer drinking at the local saloon, and combat results in a quite a bit of maiming (especially for the early villain Kingdok, and both Fone Bone and his love-interest both lose teeth towards the end).

My disjointed reading of Bone certainly impacts my final thoughts on the book: if it was going to be funny, I wanted it to be more fun; if it was going to be about dragon queens and ancient sorcerers, I wanted to see more of them at work in a way that wasn't all drawn-out mysteriousness (I'm reminded of Emperor Palpatine from Empire Strikes Back, little more than a raspy voice and intimations of evilness).

This isn't (I don't think) an entry into comics book for a young reader- the size of the book (if you're reading the one volume collection like I did) is overwhelming, and I can imagine a young reader quickly losing track of the multiple threads of the story. I may be underestimating the average kid, but I don't see a twelve year old making the jump from The Giver or Narnia or His Dark Materials to Bone.

But, take your dedicated manga reader (someone who's used to an extended storyline, used to reading sequential art, used to soap opera-esque reveals and switchbacks) and Bone could be the cross-over that brings them towards "mainstream" comics.

Don't worry, the irony that a book that was originally part of the self-published comics underground is now a mainstream gateway is not lost on me. ( )

Another victim of the no-half-stars policy -- I want to give this book 4.5 because I loved it (and it is a pretty amazing accomplishment) but it's not quite perfect enough to get 5 stars. However, it is the perfect read to get over some serious book burn-out.

I am seriously impressed by this book's ability to move me, both to actual out-loud laughter and, more than once, to tears. This would be impressive in any book, but I especially admire it in graphic novels. Also, I think it can be hard to put a g. novel down and then pick it up again without thinking it's silly. There's more transition required from real world to reading with one of these as opposed to a normal prose book (or maybe it's just me). With Bone, it would take me only a page to get sucked back in to the story and its world, and I was so engrossed, I could read with the television and the radio turned up loud without being distracted.

And the scope of the thing! I was reminded of LotR not only by the story, but by the epic page count and the number of years it took the author to complete it. I admire the amount of dedication and belief and passion that obviously went into both works.

The characters are great (Rose and Lucius are my favorites!). The art is fantastic. The story and mythology are solid enough, even if they're not perfected. I felt actual dread at times, just from black-and-white drawings, and damn it, I think I will give it 5 stars.

ETA: Returning this to the library felt like getting rid of an old friend, heh. ( )