Bone Returns

At comic-con Jeff Smith announced some new Bone projects!





From the official Bone Website:

Last night I announced two new BONE projects; BONE: Tall Tales and BONE: Quest for the Spark.

Tall Tales, pictured above, is a major repackaging of a book I did with Tom Sniegoski a few years ago called Stupid, Stupid Rat-Tails. This new book, which takes place after the Bones have returned to Boneville, revolves around Smiley and Bartleby telling tales around a campfire to a group of young Bone Scouts (their names are Ringo, Bingo, & Todd!).

One of the tales will be the long out of print story I did for Disney Adventures that was not in the BONE books, and will now be returned to the BONE cannon with a beautiful coloring job by Steve Hamaker. Another will be the The Adventures of Big Johnson Bone, Frontier Hero, which appeared in black & white as Stupid, Stupid Rat-Tails. Tom Sniegoski, who wrote SSRT, has written two new Johnson Bone stories, both of which are pretty incredible. All now in glorious Hamaker colors! I will be writing all the new Smiley and Bartleby stuff.

BONE: Quest for the Spark is a slightly different kind of thing. It is not a comic; it’s a novel. A series of three novels written by Tom Sniegoski that follow a new generation of Bone characters into the Valley.



I was a bit unsure about this project when Tom first suggested it, but when I read the first book I laughed so hard, I agreed to do it. Scholastic was so blown away by it, that they decided to make it available in hardcover and wanted the illustrations, of which I think I’m going to do about twenty, full bleed and in color.

While not an official sequel to my comic, it will be fun to see some the characters again, like the stupid rat creatures, and Roderick the racoon.

BONE: Tall Tales is scheduled for Summer of 2010, and BONE: Quest for the Spark volume one, is set for 2011.

Why Aren't You Reading: Bone?

A review from Amazon:

Mere months after publishing the final installment of the long-running fantasy saga Bone, Smith collects all 13 years' worth of it in a single, massive volume. As many comics fans know, the series chronicles the adventures of the Bone cousins--plucky Fone Bone, scheming Phony Bone, and easygoing Smiley Bone-- who leave their home of Boneville and are swept up in a Tolkienesque epic of royalty, dragons, and unspeakable evil forces out to conquer humankind. The compilation makes it evident how fully formed Smith's vision was from the very beginning--although the early chapters emphasized comedy, as do the final pages, the tale quickly found its dramatic bearings. His remarkably accomplished drawing style, in the manner of such comics masters as Walt Kelly and Carl Barks, was fully formed from the start, too. Libraries that have missed out on individual Bone series titles should seize this opportunity to make up for the fact, and those who have collected the series all along will do well to acquire the collected edition to supplement or supplant those doubtless well-worn volumes. But be prepared for overdues: even the most voracious readers will be hard-pressed to get through this hefty, phone book-like tome before they're supposed to return it.

An excellent black and white comic book series. Incredible art and an incredible story. The Louisville Library has multiple copies of all of the volumes. If you don't like black and white, then you are in luck. The original volumes are being colorized. The library has most of those as well.

The individual volumes are:
"Out from Boneville"
"The Great Cow Race"
"Eyes of the Storm"
"The Dragonslayer"
"Rock Jaw: Master of the Eastern Border"
"Old Man's Cave"
"Ghost Circles"
"Treasure Hunters"
"The Crown Of Horns"

A truly great series that kids will love as much as adults. Do yourself a favor and check it out.