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| Via Boneville.com |
The story, if you must know, is about an African from 2,000,000 years ago who becomes the first person to leave the mother continent. It is an epic heroic journey (again, much like Bone and RASL before it), distilled to perhaps its most simplistic form, not simplistic as in childish or unsophisticated, but shorn of nearly all cultural trappings from, well, the last thousand if not million years. But of course there are callbacks all over the place. It's familiar and strikingly so to our own time. It takes a creative genius like Smith to make the distant past read like our own times, not because he's transposed our world to that time, but because he sees the vivid links that make the past come alive.
To Smith, the past doesn't mean that his star is merely a primitive man. I mean, he is, but that's not to say he's some stupid brute, which is what a lot of people might imagine. He's no caveman. His urges are our urges. Mostly, he's just looking for some grub. He's thirsty, and he's got these things called monkey oranges that keep popping up. And he looks hungrily after carrion feasts, or living beasts he can hunt.
It's fun, because the initial pages see our host, whom I assume is the eponymous Tuki, in wordless adventure. Smith's art ends up looking a lot like the work of Sergio Aragones, best known from Mad Magazine and Groo, the comic version of Conan. Much of RASL was communicated visually, almost impressionistically, with Rob's adventures across multiple realities something he observes grimly (it's basically a tragic love story), and of course there was a lot of visual emphasis in Bone, often to comic effect, but also to the fantasy and horror elements (and whatever the stupid, stupid rat creatures represent).
Tuki eventually comes across the classic wise old wizard character (think Obi-Wan Kenobi or Gandalf) who helps explain what exactly his heroic journey is going to be and why it's so significant. What's neat about this particular character is that he represents Smith's vision of this earlier world, when many stages of human development were present simultaneously. The wizard is more primitive than Tuki, but more in connection with the lore of the world (hence, a wizard), so in some ways he's more sophisticated. But it's Tuki who is the bold figure who defies everything, not so much because (to this point, by the end of the season) he's trying to, but because that's where his life is leading him.
The wizard mentions a few great tasks Tuki has already accomplished, but these are incidental comments. Big things normally just happen to Smith's characters, certainly in Bone, where the cartoonish cousins enter into a much wider world in the Valley after being banished from their homeland. Otherwise they would never have met Rose, or any of the other things they experience. (Rob, it must be acknowledged, deliberately seeks out his particular form of adventure, but can't know how far down the rabbit hole, as it were, that he ultimately travels.)
As always, Smith has weaved an intricate tapestry with its own mythology. Each time, even if they can seem like variations, his stories are entirely unique from each other. Tuki is no different. The more I read it, the more I love it. Again, typical for Smith. I hope he picks up the story again soon, but there's no rush. This is one creator who has absolutely earned the right to do it his way, and he's chosen to do so in a way that seems familiar but once again feels specifically his own. That's Jeff Smith's magic.
Just when you think the translation's gone and you won't hear from him again, he comes back. And, just perhaps, better than ever.
Say it with me: You would like that.
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