A Bone to Pick!

Having previously explored the new Jeff Smith material found in BONE: TALL TALES, now’s the time to have a look at QUEST FOR THE SPARK, the recently released novel from Tom Sniegoski and Scholastic.

This is a pretty huge development for the BONE franchise, the first tangible results from the Scholastic initiative to broaden its fanbase. While many have anticipated some kind of animated movie over the years, it probably never even occurred to anyone that prose fiction would eventually turn up. For one thing, BONE is a uniquely visual experience, drawing on the combined comic book and cartoon strip heritage and combining it with epic fantasy to create something that has transcended both. While Smith has over the years allowed other to play in his sandbox, there has been little doubt that BONE and Jeff Smith are synonymous. There are already a number of contradictions that seem to surround QUEST FOR THE SPARK.

There’s little doubt that Scholastic, the childrens publisher who has just finished publishing in color the complete BONE catalog, plus a few additional volumes, including TALL TALES, is the primary motivator in this development, bringing the franchise more in line with the more traditional concepts of literature. QUEST FOR THE SPARK happens to represent the first material Scholastic can claim as its own as well. With the success of Harry Potter (for which the publisher serves as the US distributor), there was a flood of similarly ambitious properties to serve the young readers market that a wizard awakened, and BONE now officially joins this trend. Sniegoski crafts his tale more out of this tradition than from what Smith established in the graphic novels. This in itself is not a bad thing, and is in fact very much a good thing, further broadening the appeal and possibilities of BONE, though it does serve new readers more than it does older ones (in any number of senses).

I came to TALL TALES and its promise of this book late, but still early enough to join in the anticipation, since this was still very much an event for me. Smith provides sporadic illustrations for QUEST, to which his new drawings in the revised STUPID, STUPID RAT TAILS now seems like a prologue, though when I say “sporadic,” I really do mean it, and sometimes, it seems as if they were done without a lot of consulting with Sniegoski’s manuscript. But more than TALL TALES, Smith has a chance to create new characters, even just in visualization, representation. There are Bones here, an older explorer and his two young companions, a nephew and niece, but they’re more like the hobbits of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, supporting a human lead, a boy thrust into unexpected adventure. There’s also a disgraced Veni Yan warrior, and a pair of Rat Creatures, used to typical comic effect.

How all of it reads leads to some interesting comparisons, and I’m glad I’ve already referenced Jackson’s Tolkien adaptations, and Harry Potter, because they have further relevance. I don’t claim to be a Tolkien scholar (because that’s the best term at this point), but I’m familiar enough with his Rings trilogy that I could make a few observations on Jackson’s versions, which have a greater divergence than most fans of either version often admit. Jackson clearly has a visual feast to present, and he cast the parts perfectly, though he alters enough material that it ultimately throws the whole balance of the protect off, from a strong and confident beginning to further developments that seem to miss the point, until he finally realizes he has to end strongly on Frodo’s triumph (though the glory really falls on Sam). He spends so much time with Aragorn, the strapping human destined to be king, and muddled in the novelty of Gollum, that he loses the magic he began with (it’s perhaps no surprise that Gandalf is the clear distinguishing mark of these transitions, beginning with Frodo and ending with Aragorn).

In contrast, the Harry Potter adaptations seemed to grow into their strengths, recognizing the important elements, and better utilizing all the things that were put in place at the beginning. That seems to be the way Sniegoski warmed into his role as caretaker of the BONE franchise. QUEST begins awkwardly, even clumsily, slipping from one cliché to another, so that the author seems to have assembled something reader will already be familiar with, and it isn’t necessarily BONE, but as the story builds, so does Sniegoski’s confidence. I realize there’s a world of difference from the way the Potter films, Jackson, and Sniegoski have worked. A succession of directors have worked closely with J.K. Rowling and in the warmth of blockbuster sales to get Harry right, while Jackson worked decades after Tolkien’s death, and only in the midst of a cult following, and shot his three films virtually simultaneously. Sniegoski himself has enjoyed working on his own projects, and a miniaturized version of the fallow period the Lord of the Rings books enjoyed, building and maintaining fan interest, but not a lot of pressure, and he ahs worked with Jeff Smith himself. There’s a mingling of experiences, from just the examples given, that has allowed QUEST FOR THE SPARK to be more of a success than it really had to be. BONE is not primarily a prose experience, but it can apparently work that way, too, with a few modifications.

There’s always going to be something changed in the translation from one medium to another, and that doesn’t necessarily mean one will be better than another, whether you’re talking the original material or the new incarnation. In most instances, bringing new voices to talk the same language but in different words only helps to strengthen the material, proves its enduring appeal. Scholastic has helped make that happen with BONE, and Sniegoski proves that he’s capable of being that new voice with QUEST FOR THE SPARK, which is itself only the beginning of a whole new epic tale. If Scholastic had commissioned someone to adapt the original stories themselves, who knows what I’d be writing right now? If that movie had ever happened (or will happen in the future), many things fans now cherish will not make it into that new version of what they already know. But what remains when you strip those things away? One would hope, something you may still enjoy.

We’re at the point where we’re beginning to find out.