Jeff Smith’s Bone is one of the most celebrated comics of all time. So how well did it improve over the original comic strips?
Disclaimer: I’d like to apologize to Kathleen Glosan for not acting on Cartoon Book’s request sooner. I’ve been so busy with other requests and website maintenance that I almost didn’t find anything to work with. So now’s the time to act.
What Is Jeff Smith’s Bone Anyway?
Bone is an atypical fantasy comic. The title cousins Fone, Phoney, and Smiley Bone stand out like sore thumbs both with their designs and backgrounds. It’s strongly implied that they’re from a typical gag-a-week comic strip in contemporary times. Like Calvin and Hobbes or the Peanuts. When they’re chased out of their home Boneville, they end up in a medieval fantasy.
Not like an isekai, more like a hidden world such as Narnia. In this valley, they get swept up in an epic plot involving rat creatures, a dragon, an evil overlord, and a queendom. Funny how Cerebus Syndrome usually kicks in when the fantasy part is leaned into. At least it got Smith’s company Cartoon Books running with more comics like Tuki.
Isn’t This Story About Thorn?
Bone is an odd comic, but it’s never a boring one. It’s structure feels like the perfect balance between a gag-a-page serial and an epic fantasy. Unlike say its prototype where the princess is the title character.
Look this is more of a me thing rather than a structural flaw. I have trouble enjoying gag-a-strips one after another unless they’re a serial like The Phantom or Popeye. They feel like stuff meant to be enjoyed one week at a time.
Thorn definitely feels that way. Based on other college news strips, they’re supposed to be rawer than their next draft. Doesn’t make it easier for me to read through, but still.
While Smith had an outline to work from, a number of strips are improvised. Like when Jeff Smith shows up when other characters broke out of the fourth wall.
Why Jeff Smith’s Bone Exists
As Strange Brain Part’s Alan explains, Jeff Smith reworks the Thorn strips into the book Bone over a couple of things. From newspapers wanting Bone to be a gag series instead of an adventure and the black-and-white indie scene with Cerebus and The Tick.
While Thorn feels like a checklist filler where the events happen in and out of the comic, Bone has a direction. For example the Bone cousins don’t appear out of the blue because the comic calls for more characters. Or how Grandma Ben doesn’t somehow doesn’t come back from the dead. Everything is self-contained with a specific set of characters appearing with no redundancies. For one, Phoney as a con-man is more than enough compared to a religious clown.
With only a planned ending, Smith develops the cast organically from gags into the epic fantasy. First by remaking scenes from the strips into more efficient panel reads, keeping their humor intact. Then he takes out bits that didn’t land as well and replacing them with better ones. Like a religious satire getting replaced with the cow race based on reader feedback.
The Result?
Thanks to this dedication, Bone keeps its tonal consistency compared to Thorn. No gag looks out of place like modern journalism or clothes in a medieval village. Not to mention the threat of the Hooded One feels like an ever looming presence. Where humor isn’t enough to keep spirits up. It makes the transition from comedy to epic fantasy all-the-more immersive.
Jeff Smith’s Bone Celebrates Thorn
Now I’d like to make it perfectly clear. I am not saying Thorn is awful and that people just ignore it in favor of Bone. Neither am I saying that if you don’t support Thorn, you don’t support Bone. What I am saying is that Thorn being published in an album is a celebration of all of Jeff Smith’s efforts to create Bone. The original Kickstarter is proof of that; thousands of true fans owning a piece of history. Some of them might even be the ones who gave their input about Thorn to become Bone.
For these fans and Jeff, it’s not about the nostalgia, it’s getting the original strips to the biggest audience possible. It’s fun to look back on where it begins, even if it’s not for everybody. I may not be one of these true fans, but I can’t help but admire someone who values input to be better than before. Especially with how many times Bone loses chances for a bigger audience in animation.
Thanks for coming to the end and as always remember to look between the panels.