The Jeff Smith/Bone Appreciation Thread

I got the giant collection for my son (a first-grader), and we’ve been slowly making our way thru it (we just finished the first of the three big volumes that make up the story). I’d never read the series before... just heard it was classic, and great for kids.

It’s clearly a cartooning tour-de-force, but I’m not totally sure what to make of it... the story’s impressively detailed, but not really drawing me in, and there’s a lot of talking & exposition. Somehow it all feels kinda prosaic, and idk, “lacking in imagination” for an epic fantasy involving dragons, rat creatures, talking bugs, etc. (And the characters all sort of talk the same?)

But my kid’s really into it, which is what matters... I wasn’t sure if it would hold his attn. Maybe the story will pay off as it develops? The book’s just very slow-paced — which makes it all the more impressive that it maintained a regular readership in comic form, I guess.

The story doesn't pay off in my opinion - if you're not feeling the charm now, then you're not going to feel it any the more when it heads for a copy of Lord of the Rings in the last book.

sadly, i would agree with "doesn't pay off," once you get past RockJaw the story goes Game of Thrones and spirals. Art's great throughout though!

yeah it's a bit of a 'pantser' plot-wise and that came more apparent on my more recent second read-through, which I kinda gave up on half-way through.
But hey, what a ride! Think of it a bit like a soap opera or a Disney Game of Thrones and it who cares about the story arc. I'm in it for the amazing artwork, the humour, the fun little twists and the madcap ideas.
There were a few parts that I actually found quite frightening and would have most likely freaked out on if I were a kid.
Compared to RASL, which was an attempt at a more serious self-contained and shorter story, it's clear JS is better suited to this rambling, epic style

The art is impressive, and it seems remarkably consistent over the 13(?) years of work that the book represents (or so I gather by flipping around).

During the first few years of serialisation, I'd re-read the whole run over and over again. Once it settled in to the wilderness quest, I stopped and have never read the whole series through.

Also it sucks that he went back and re-lettered the whole thing on computer

“Orphaned, salt-of-the-earth adolescent learns that s/he is descended from royalty/power” is a compelling storyline — and while Bone is hardly the first to employ it, it uses it well (and it predates, say, Harry Potter!).

The revelation of why all the bad guys are fixed on Phoney Bone is (as mentioned above) pretty clever. The book’s pretty exciting around this point, too.

The section (apparently) leading up to a siege on the old city gets very dense with the politics and minutiae of the story’s main armed conflict... there’s even a blockade of trade routes and a merchants’ guild (I can’t help but assume The Phantom Menace was an influence, which seems to track with the publication timeframe).

I guess I’m not so into this aspect of the story... reminds me of how every time I tried reading LOTR as a teen, I would get bored and quit halfway through, lol.

(I also should note that my son is reading chunks of the book on his own during the day, and then we’re picking it up together at bedtime; so I’m only reading parts of the story, and getting filled in on what I missed, which obv. doesn’t make for a fair basis to review it.)

My son has now read Bone three times (largely on his own), so I’m fully sold on its gold status as a kid’s book.

aww that's great

Any good suggestions for follow-ups; maybe something similarly detailed & epic? I've Googled around a little, but don't know kids' comics very well (and I mostly know superheroes, which he's only mildly into). Thx

Amulet, maybe?
https://kids.scholastic.com/kids/books/amulet/

Also the Barks books are kinda urgent and key
https://www.fantagraphics.com/series/the-complete-carl-barks-disney-library/

Thanks — Amulet came up in my search, I’ll look into that.

Not quite as epic (only six volumes) but Cleopatra in Space might be up your alley.

I showed the boy these options, and he chose Amulet; we’ll see how he likes Book 1 (I notice, er, that the kids’ father dies in the beginning... *tugs at collar*)

my 2 year old daughter absolutely loves smith's book for the spiegelman/mouly kids books imprint toon. it's called little mouse gets ready. from where i was sitting tonight i could see her face as my wife read it to her and it was really ridiculously delightful. actually pulled out my big bone phonebook to try and judge when it can be deployed. not yet.