Quarter Bin 105 "Bone"

Bone #20, 22 (Cartoon, Image)
from October 1995, February 1996

I'm an avowed fan of Jeff Smith's Bone (and Jeff Smith in general), so I read the complete Bone saga some time ago, finally, in the handy One Volume Edition.  I have a friend to thank for turning me on to Bone in the first place, because otherwise such a comic would never have been on my radar, but I started reading around the time Smith ceded publishing to Image, for a time.  These issues actually catch the series in transition, and that's pretty fascinating in and of itself.  Smith finds himself justifying the business decision in the letters column.  History shows he later brought Bone back to its self-publishing roots at Cartoon Books, and later still reprint rights at Scholastic, where it found a whole new audience.

I stopped reading Bone regularly well before the end of the series, so reading the One Volume Edition was a way for me to find out just how much the story evolved, over time, how it became truly epic fantasy.  That's still developing in these issues, but in hindsight it's already apparent, although there's still plenty of the Bone cousins being the Bone cousins, more Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring than his Return of the King, in terms of the hobbits. 

This is a series always worth revisiting.

Quarter Bin 76 "Automatic Kafka, and other stuff"

A lot of comics bought from an actual quarter bin.  Don't say it never happens...

Automatic Kafka #2 (WildStorm)
From October 2002.
Joe Casey was one of the big names in comic at that time, but then he split off with a couple of his fellow luminaries to form Man of Action, which produced hit concepts like Ben 10 and Big Hero 6.  But before he left, he left a splash, with stuff like Automatic Kafka.  Chances are if he hadn't left, Kafka would have a lasting memory.  Like a lot of Casey and WildStorm's efforts from that time, it was a post-millennial superhero deconstruction project, although today it looks like a precursor to Matt Kindt's MIND MGMT, which to my mind is a very good thing.  So it was certainly a pleasure to read some of it, and I certainly wouldn't mind reading more.  It was certainly the most pleasant discovery of this particular lot, although there was plenty of other good stuff, such as:

Batman: Futures End #1 (DC)
From November 2014.
The Futures End specials were such a rich creative opportunity, and I love checking out what the more adventurous ones attempted.  This one wasn't an attempt, it was Scott Snyder, with Ray Fawkes scripting, revisiting his fascinating vision of the future Batman, so obsessed with his mission that he sets up a series of clones who will continue it indefinitely.  It was easily Snyder's richest Batman concept, and one seen otherwise only sparingly, from a short story in the pages of the anniversary Detective Comics #27.  I didn't read this special when it was originally released, because I didn't imagine that Snyder would revisit the concept, and fan reactions at the time didn't catch on to the significance of the issue, but I eventually read it digitally, and so now I've got a physical copy as well.  This is the origin of the clone initiative, an older Batman who defies the odds and breaks into Lex Luthor's secret lab to get what he needs for it.  I'd love if Snyder eventually returned again to the concept, but a small collection of these two stories wouldn't be out of order, either, so fans know they exist...

Bone Holiday Special (Hero)
From 1993.
This was something of an unbelievable find, a Hero magazine special from the early days of Jeff Smith's Bone.  In it is an exclusive story, plus an interview (Smith comes off as less than impressive, alas), and reprints of early strips predating Bone, back when it was called Thorn.  Bone is an endlessly charming memory, one of my all-time favorite comics, and Smith has proven to be an enduring talent as well, with RASL and Tuki (an ongoing project) also under his belt by this point.

Cerebus #201 (Aardvark-Vanaheim)
From December 1995.
Dave Sim is such a unique character in comics lore.  He was a virtual god of the indy press at his prime, but since Cerebus ended fans have tended to reflect more on his alleged shortcomings than on what he accomplished.  This issue begins the "Guys" arc, and seems to feature parodies of George Harrison and Ringo Starr (and virtually incomprehensible dialogue to match their accents).  I have no idea how representative it is of Cerebus as a whole, but it was certainly unique reading.  Sim includes an origin of Cerebus (and the name of its publisher, Aardvark-Vanaheim) in an essay, so that was pretty lucky for a guy who's not usually lucky enough to find an issue...

Chosen #2 (Dark Horse)
One of Mark Millar's formative projects (he's since retitled it American Jesus, and plans on further volumes) features a boy who may or may not be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.  It's actually pretty interesting.

Empire #3 (DC)
From November 2003.
Mark Waid was my favorite '90s comic book writer.  Eventually, he started to try and figure out how he was going to follow up all the stuff he'd accomplished in that decade, and everything he's done since has been a continuation of that.  Empire was his first shot at what the kind of superhero storytelling he later developed in his Irredeemable comics.  The concept was, What if the bad guy wins?  This issue features the superhero who the villain only wants the world to think died.  I don't know, maybe my lackluster opinion of Waid in the last few decades colors my impression of Empire, but it's hard to see now why fans were so wild about it.  But they've consistently been wild about a lot of minor work from Waid.  I should know.  I knew his work when it was great...

Green Lantern: Mosaic #6 (DC)
From November 1992.
1992 was from the era I last saw bargain packs all over the place, and how I first discovered Green Lantern: Mosaic.  This was, as I know understand it, the Vertigo version of Green Lantern.  Gerard Jones ruled the whole Green Lantern landscape at that time, and it was surprisingly expansive landscape at that time.  Mosaic was the big gamble.  I guess I couldn't really appreciate how big a gamble it was until I read its letters column.  The first issue of the series was the first issue I read, and for decades remains the only issue.  But I loved that issue.  Eventually, I caught another issue, and then even the arc from Green Lantern where it originated.  Turns out, fans really didn't know what to make of it, and Jones didn't go out of his way to make it any easier.  I mean, this was a Vertigo title.  And it seriously needs to be rediscovered.  It's pretty much the Green Lantern version of Grant Morrison's Animal Man.  And this is how you make John Stewart relevant.

Haven: The Broken City #9 (DC)
From October 2002.
A couple of upstart creators were given a shot at creating something new at DC.  This was a time of pretty wild experimentation at DC, and so it was as good a time to let upstart creators try their thing as any.  The result is better than its complete lack of impact indicates.  I caught the first issue from the same quarter bin a little while back, so it only seemed appropriate that I caught the last issue, too.  Bookending the series were two specials featuring the Justice League.  I don't really know what happened, why the upstarts vanished and the whole thing forgotten.  But it didn't really deserve that fate.

Hawkeye #3 (Marvel)
From December 2012.
But then again, the much better established Matt Fraction couldn't help this series make a bigger impact...

Infinite Vacation #5 (Image)
Back when I thought I was going to continue to be a big fan of Nick Spencer, I caught the first issue of this one, and so reading the last one seemed like it would finally be appropriate.  In hindsight Infinite Vacation may be remembered, if anything, for helping launch Image's continuing obsession with really bold coloring.  This is the era of colorists, folks.

Infinity Man and the Forever People: Futures End #1 (DC)
From November 2014.
This Futures End special is pretty good, too, and is the first time I actually read this New Gods series.  I think its only shortcoming is that it...really doesn't seem all that relevant a New Gods concept.  But it's still a good read!

Justice League Europe #36 (DC)
From March 1992.
Gerard Jones again, this time helping smooth the transition from the Giffen/DeMatteis era to the Jurgens era, as he dismantles the old Bwa-Ha-Ha League (a lot of the members in this issue join Jurgens' Justice League America).

The Mice Templar: Volume IV - Legend #3 (Image)
From June 2013.
I was such a fan of Mice Templar, but I kind of got...tired of it after a while.  The black and white art doesn't help, because it's hard to distinguish characters, especially since they're all rodents.  But it was such an ambitious concept, and eventually ran for, I think, forty-two issues across five mini-series.  This is actually a pretty good issue, and the new essay writer explains the history of anthropomorphic storytelling, which is kind of handy.  So it was a good random issue to help revisit the concept.  Plus, the Salmon of Knowledge! 

Moon Knight #16 (Marvel)
From August 2015.
Predictably, Cullen Bunn features the least imaginative version of Marvel's project to make Moon Knight its second most interesting character (actual storytelling results may vary), after Deadpool.  Although I hear Jeff Lemire is doing some truly killer work with the concept at the moment...

Promethea #22 (ABC)
From November 2002.
Alan Moore is the comics genius (so proclaimed by at least one whole generation of fans) I consider more lackluster than not.  Promethea was his project with future superstar J.H. Williams III, who later collaborated with Neil Gaiman on a new Sandman.  Speaking of which, this issue reads like a lackluster, Alan Moore version of Sandman.  And speaking of which...

Sandman #63 (Vertigo)
I've been trying to catch up with Gaiman's seminal comics saga for a while (as evidenced by my annotations of The Annotated Sandman, a project that will continue at some point).  This issue is from late in the series and, more specifically, "The Kindly Ones."  It is not, however, particularly an issue to hold against counterfeit Alan Moore Sandman.  It's a pretty busy issue, and certainly better than Moore's effort, but not an easy issue to laud among the greater Gaiman material available...

Smax #3 (ABC)
From December 2003.
"ABC," by the way, stands for "America's Best Comics."  Which these really aren't.  They were pretty popular at the time, and Alan Moore's last real stab at popular work (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen came from this era), and the funny thing is, they were all variations on stuff he originally did for Rob Liefeld.  It makes sense somehow.  Anyway, if Moore weren't so completely obsessed with sex, he might do better work.  That's my theory, anyway...

Superman/Wonder Woman Annual #2 (DC)
From February 2016.
This is pretty much how the romance ends.  It's kind of sad.

The New Titans #66 (DC)
From May 1990.
The cover of this later issue from the seminal Wolfman/Perez collaboration features Raven...not making out with Dick Grayson.  It only looks that way.  Raven's meddling in Dick's love life would come a little later in Wolfman's run (a development that's routinely overlooked by fans, by the way).  It's worth noting that George Perez is not on art duties this issue, but rather co-scripting (the beginning, perhaps, of his writing career).  The art, rather, comes from the formative pen of Tom Grummett, whose style is somewhat evident in this early work.  If memory serves me right, he's also drawing when Wolfman has Raven crash Dick's would-be nuptials with Starfire...

The Legend of Will Power #1, 2 (Primal Paper)
From March, August 2011.
A local comics creator produced these comics (it's always worth sampling the native talent, which includes Drew Moss, who was in the store sketching once, and complaining about his publisher complaining about him...).  This isn't Moss, however, but Vince White, and the reason I picked up these issues was because I had the suspicion there might be some Green Lantern in these pages.  But the utter lack of connection between the superhero and his name (which is actually his real name) shows the disconnect between White's ambitions and his actual talent.  He's a better artist.  He needed a co-writer.  Live and learn?

Digitally Speaking... #6 "How (and How Not) to Make Your Own Comics"

Black Powder #1 (Asylum)
From 2011.  Aside from the fact that it seems to be a far less inspired version of Pirates of the Caribbean (meaning, alas, no Jack Sparrow), the art becomes incredibly distracting.  At first I thought it was because writer/artist Dwayne Harris digitally created it.  But then at the back of the issue his process is revealed, and it's bad pencils at the start and then bad digital coloring on top.  The result is a mess.  Not a terrible mess, just not one that inspires a great deal of confidence, much like how Harris assumes the reader will be interested in a story that takes its time getting to the pirates, and then just keeps yacking yacking yacking except for a few stabby pages (stabby pages are good, but they are not a replacement for swashbuckling, which is half the reason to ever tell a pirate story to begin with).  That's really all there is to know about this comic, which you will never have heard of to begin with, and judging on this sample there's absolutely no reason why you should be concerned about that.  Classic case of a really good cover distracting from a hot mess that follows.  Move along.

Bone #1 (Cartoon)
From 1991.  In strict contrast is Jeff Smith's classic Bone debut.  I've read it a number of times at this point, but it never gets old.  Smith is a bona fide comics genius.  This issue introduces the Bone cousins, who look like a trio of classic comic strip characters, and yet are so basic in design it's a marvel to hear them speak, because they at once do and absolutely do not talk like any other comic strip character you've ever seen (except maybe Rat and Pig from Pearls Before Swine).  And the issue starts in the middle of the story, and that middle is really only the start of something far, far greater.  There are a number of teases as to that much bigger story, and great humor besides.  It's Smith's absolute mastery of his craft that strikes you, again and again. It's the polar opposite of a Black Powder, in every way possible.  Both are about as far away from the comics mainstream as you can get, indy productions through and through.  Except in Black Powder it's blatantly obvious how that's usually not a good thing, whereas in Bone it's so impressively professional, no wonder Smith has been lured to the mainstream in the past, both with Bone itself temporarily to the indy professionals at Image, and with Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil at DC.

So, right there in a nutshell, if you ever had dreams of launching your own indy comic, two examples of the probable fate that awaits you.  Hopefully it's clear enough which one you ought to shoot for.

My All-time Favorite Comic Books, 10-1

The final countdown...!

#10. Geoff Johns's Green Lantern

Creators: Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke, Ethan Van Sciver, Ivan Reis, various
Publication dates: 2004-2013
Issues: Green Lantern: Rebirth 1-6, Green Lantern 1-67, 0-20, Blackest Night 1-8

Green Lantern was already my favorite comic book franchise when Johns strolled into the story in 2004.  I thought I already had my definitive era in Ron Marz's Kyle Rayner.  Then Johns brought Hal Jordan back, and exploded the whole mythology.  I mean, literally, he took the basic building blocks and figured out the best possible expansion, and led the whole thing to its greatest heights.  It's the epitome of creative storytelling, the single best innovative run in superhero comic book history, one that will continue to be felt for years. I mean, even Larfleeze has gotten his own ongoing series now.  Larfleeze!  How awesome is that?  Saint Walker made it into the pre-New 52 Justice League, the Red Lanterns have had their own series since the DC relaunch, and Johns has made a strong case for a Sinestro series.  No one would have ever thought that possible before 2004.  That's the definition of a substantial legacy.

#9. Air

Creators: G. Willow Wilson, M.K. Perker
Publication dates: 2008-2010
Issues: 1-24

Along with 52 part of a very select group to top my annual QB50 list twice, Air was an unabashed obsession of mine throughout its publication, even though it struggled to find an audience that did not have the name "Tony Laplume."  But it was brilliant, typical of the Vertigo breed in having a distinct and imaginative mythology, but atypical in its intimate approach, like Sandman without all the Goth touches.  G. Willow Wilson managed to spin a conspiracy and hero journey into one yarn.  The closest proximity I've found since was the similarly short-lived Saucer Country.  As with most of my selections, widely deserves a much larger audience.

#8. Cobra

Creators: Mike Costa, Antonio Fuso, Christos Gage
Publication dates: 2009-2013
Issues: 1-4, Special 1-2, 1-13, 1-21, The Cobra Files 1-9

This is basically everything I loved about Superboy and the Ravers, The Great Ten, Seven Soldiers of Victory, and Young Avengers in a nonsuperhero title, and surprisingly with another famous franchise it managed to totally reinvent from the outset, featuring an obscure Joe named Chuckles in the mission of his life, a reboot timeline where Cobra is just being discovered.  And from there, it's basically the Assange/Snowden/NSA era well before any of those scandals broke, one brilliant bit of character exploration after another in a world of paranoia and secrets, an unexpected phenomenon publisher IDW never expected, assuming it had merely a good mini-series when it acquired G.I. Joe in 2008, leading to a series of extensions that eventually transformed the whole line with the sensational death of Cobra Commander.  You don't need to know or care about the franchise to love this saga.  You just need to love great comics.

#7. Sandman

Creators: Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, various
Publication dates: 1989-1996
Issues: 1-75

For simplicity's sake I'm sticking to the original series rather than also include subsequent additional materials, such as the recently-launched Sandman Overture mini-series.  Simply put, this one needs no introduction.  It's perhaps the most literary comic book ever published, filled with classical elements and one of the best-known mythologies outside of superheroes ever created.  It's a masterpiece.  Move along, move along.

#6. Bone

Creators: Jeff Smith
Publication dates: 1991-2004
Issues: 1-55

This one I owe entirely to a friend who was obsessed with it.  For a while, there was a very small cult audience obsessed with it.  And it expanded, thanks to word of mouth.  It started making in-roads to full-blown mainstream awareness.  There was talk of a movie.  All of this is for good reason.  Like a cartoon strip wedded perfectly to epic fantasy (such as you would never have believed possible until Bone), Jeff Smith's vision was a dream come to life, so popular Image for a while took over publication, until it went back to Smith's own company, where it completed its epic journey, only to be reborn in a series of reprints, where its legacy (as I've been hoping throughout this list for many other series) has grown.  Oh, and because it's my favorite phrase from Bone: stupid, stupid rat creatures...

#5. Wasteland

Creators: Antony Johnston, Christopher Mitten, Justin Greenwood
Publication dates: 2006-2014
Issues: 1-60

I've attempted for years to be an ambassador to this series, a classic post-apocalyptic yarn that explodes the genre into a startlingly rich landscape filled with intricate relationships between isolated figures.  Unlike The Walking Dead, Wasteland has made the riddle of what created the world after the Big Wet the whole point, except it's taken the whole journey to reach it.  In the meantime social politics have defined the story, especially the betrayals at the heart of life in Newbegin, the perfect representation of civilization after civilization's end.  My favorite character remains Michael, a sort of Wolverine if Wolverine had never joined the X-Men.

#4. 52

Creators: Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, Keith Giffen, various
Publication dates: 2006-2007
Issues: 1-52

DC's first weekly series in years, an ambitious effort to put out a new issue every week for a year, could have been its riskiest gamble ever.  Instead it turned out to be a stroke of genius, one of the best single comics it ever put out, following a hodgepodge of characters who could never have been mistaken for the mainstream (although some of them, including Booster Gold and the new Batwoman, received their own ongoing series as a result) as they embark on the greatest stories of their careers, including the Elongated Man's long-awaited response to Identity Crisis and Black Adam's shot at redemption.  The league of creators who wrote it remains a who's who, and to my mind in no small part to their participation in this book.  The company's later attempts to duplicate this remarkable accomplishment never seemed to capture the same interest from the fans, but that's to be expected, although I would highly recommend Countdown, while the bi-weekly Brightest Day is another winner.

#3. The Death of Captain Marvel

Creators: Jim Starlin
Publication date: 1982
Issues: [graphic novel]

This is the comic book that made me a fan of comic books, and it is also among the first I ever read, and completely by accident, something my sister had randomly come across and I stole a look, and no joking, I was changed forever.  The death of any comic book character wasn't as common in 1982 as it is today, and the true testament of this event is that Captain Marvel remains respectfully deceased.  It's a surreal, literary exploration and epitaph for a character who was never really that popular but whose legacy was instantly cemented by this effort.  What more could you ask for?

#2. Kingdom Come

Creators: Mark Waid, Alex Ross
Publication dates: 1996
Issues: 1-4

You might notice that I love my comics to be literary, and no superhero comic was ever more literary, not to mention seminal in my own creative development, than this landmark event that peered into the future of DC's icons and saw nothing good.  Lois Lane dead.  Superman forced into retirement.  The next generation, led by Magog, the reverse of everything that had come before them.  Narrated by a simple preacher and steeped in religious imagery (this is the secret origin of my obsession with the number 7, and why I subsequently adopted the term "seven thunders" from the Book of Revelations for what I always assumed must be my own magnum opus, because it was used in the previews for Kingdom Come), this was both creators at their absolute finest.  One of them ended up chasing this achievement for years (Ross) while the other only occasionally revisited it (Waid, in The Kingdom event that was as close to Seven Soldiers of Victory as DC ever got before Grant Morrison), while Geoff Johns famously brought it all back in the pages of his Justice Society of America.  Even Magog eventually entered the regular canon and had an ongoing series.  Often seen as DC's response to Marvels, it is more accurately seen in its own distinctive light, which is ultimately a more hopeful version of The Dark Knight Returns, taken on the grand scale.

#1. "The Return of Barry Allen"

Creators: Mark Waid, Greg LaRocque
Publication dates: 1993
Issues: The Flash 74-79

I choose to include only one storyline from Mark Waid's extended run on The Flash for a specific reason, because it was the earliest and best example of the whole thing, which often lived up to its potential and sometimes didn't (and the best of it wasn't even in the pages of The Flash but rather Impulse), so it's better to remember what remains the most memorable than complicate matters.  Because "The Return of Barry Allen" is most certainly the best of it.  And for the record, it doesn't even feature Barry Allen.  This was years before Barry came back.  The Flash throughout Waid's run was Wally West ("and I'm the Fastest Man Alive"), the third speedster to carry the name, and he was keenly aware of the whole mythology, which before Geoff Johns on Green Lantern, Waid was the first to attempt a wholesale expansion, introducing the concept of the Speed Force and old as well as new faces to the family, including my personal favorite, Max Mercury, the Zen Master of Speed.  If there is any weakening to this legacy, it's perhaps that even Waid seemed to let it slip by the wayside after a while, perhaps after "Dead Heat" (acknowledged within the pages of Johns's The Flash: Rebirth with a cameo by the villain Savitar), while Johns himself in two separate runs (with Wally and Barry) went in different directions.  Better, again, to remember it at its most pure, most perfect, most serene, most effective, when it's Wally struggling with his role in the grand scheme of things.  James Robinson would later take the same basic concept to similar heights in the pages of Starman, but has no comparable single storyline to this one.  This is the one, if you love superheroes and their legacies, that you have to read.  This is the love letter of all love letters to the whole phenomenon.

(All covers via Comic Book Database.)

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.

Stupid, Stupid Rat Creatures...!

If you can believe it, Jeff Smith started publishing BONE back in 1991. For some modern readers, that history only stretches back to 2005, when Scholastic started reprinting, in color, the original collections for a more general audience, where emerging readers who otherwise would never have known about Phone Bone and his cousins and their adventures in the Valley, since Smith really only had access to regular visitors to comic book shops originally. BONE did develop a considerable following that way, but so much has happened since then.

Scholastic continued printing the original volumes, and finally reached CROWN OF HORNS in 2009 (a virtual eternity for something that already existed, when fans of Harry Potter would become antsy for J.K. Rowling to bridge a gap of only a few years while writing epics that in total length eclipse even the famed ONE VOLUME EDITION of Smith’s opus), and eventually went after the rest of the material, the ROSE companion book illustrated by Charles Vess, and then last year TALL TALES.

Here’s where I should attempt another introduction, because I may be in danger of “burying the lead.” What truly makes TALL TALES special is that it features some actual new material. This would have been huge news I couldn’t possibly have avoided a few years ago. To be precise, maybe 2004, the year Smith concluded the original BONE series, or 2005, when it seemed perfectly reasonable to assume that the ride really had ended. BONE was one of the darlings of comics fans for years (you might say, specifically, 1991-2004), a book Smith put out under his Cartoon Books imprint, until its popularity peaked and Image wanted a slice of it (though the series subsequently reverted back to Cartoon), and this was long before TIME called it one of the all-time greatest graphic novels. I must confess to not having been a reader, even when I began to frequent comic book stores, until a friend of mine kept insisting I try it, and even then, I didn’t keep reading it for long (idiot!!!). This was during the period before the full breadth of Smith’s vision truly became apparent, when I might be forgiven in mistaking its appeal to lie mostly in the silly antics of the Bone cousins, who all my experience reminded me of comic strip characters inhabiting a more continuing world than usual. (It reminded me best of CALVIN + HOBBES, and to Bill Watterson, it would have looked almost exactly like POGO.)

Still, as I’ve detailed elsewhere, it can sometimes be difficult for me to be a regular comics reader. Even when I tentatively dipped my toes back into the comics waters in 2004, when I was aware that BONE was coming to an end, I decided to skip it. It wasn’t until the ONE VOLUME EDITION was first published that I began to consider that I might get back into this BONE thing. I was thrilled to see OUT FROM BONEVILLE at a Wal-mart one day, when Scholastic began its efforts. I had remembered vividly when Smith used to talk about plans to make BONE into an animated feature, and this new exposure made me think of that first. It was finally going to happen! But Scholastic didn’t continue very speedily (as if making absolutely sure they weren’t making some gigantic mistake, counting and analyzing all the numbers from the initial sales), and the more Pixar and its ilk broke into the movies and transformed expectations , a BONE animated feature seemed less likely. It seemed to fit the pattern less and less. It would be like asking Mickey Mouse, a respected and admired and versatile star, but still almost completely irrelevant to today’s audiences, to star in a new movie.

I don’t care to admit how long it actually took for me to finally buy and read the complete story, via the ONE VOLUME EDITION, but the more I read it, the more I sat in awe of Smith’s vision. When I started working in bookstores, I was able to track Scholastic’s progress more closely (though I refrained from buying the same material that I already had, even though that initial collection looked lonely), and it quickly faded into a favorite aspect of my everyday experience, with a little thrill every time someone asked to find them.

What ended up happening, of course, was that I ended up buying the companion volumes, ROSE and the somewhat superfluous HANDBOOK, which seemed to be intended for exactly those young readers Scholastic had originally envisioned. At some point, I had bought a copy of STUPID, STUPID RAT TAILS, a Cartoon collection that featured Smith collaborating with or completely ceding control to other creators: Tom Sniegoski and Stan Sakai (who has his own legend to maintain with USAGI YOJIMBO), and when I first heard of TALL TALES, I couldn’t figure out how much of the material was reprinted from RAT TAILS, and how much of it, as promised, was supposed to be new. TALL TALES was originally released in 2010, but I didn’t get it until this year, thanks to an ambiguity that still baffles me. If I’d known exactly what it was, I probably wouldn’t have waited so long.

The first entry in this Comics Reader blog was the annual QB50, a list of my favorite comics from the preceding year. It’s likely I would have found a place for something as exceptional as new BONE if I’d known. The list didn’t entirely suffer from lack of Jeff Smith, though, since I’ve been following his newest project, RASL, which I term as Smith’s adult imagination, versus ideas that had obviously interested him since childhood, in BONE, when creatures who look like bones are actually called Bones, and who otherwise don’t really fit into the rest of even their own world.

When I finally had to guts to push past the confusion and simply buy TALL TALES, I discovered that it did indeed contain substantially new material, with only half reprinted from RAT TAILS, featuring Big Johnson Bone’s adventures in the Valley long before the Bone cousins ever landed there. Sniegoski is Smith’s main collaboration in that half as well as the rest of it, which includes most of the new material. Smiley Bone takes a group of Bone scouts camping, and spins several, well, tall tales for them, and these episodes are written by Sniegoski. The whole book features art by Smith, whether reprinted from RAT TAILS or completely new. Clearly he hasn’t missed a beat since 2004, and no doubt thanks to the fact that he has never been able to leave BONE entirely behind. While none of it is essential material for those who grew enchanted with the original series, it does serve to remind the reader that this is still wildly appealing stuff, that doesn’t really have a clear parallel with other things they may be reading. It’s almost as if, stripped of the fantasy elements, you can still think of BONE as that perfect blend of your childhood memories, when you would never have questioned the rather featureless appearance of the main stars. (Rereading the Big Johnson Bone adventures, it’s almost fair to say that, like Goofy, the Bones are probably most analogous to dogs, even though they have no clear species of their own.)

I would be a tad remiss if I didn’t mention another draw of TALL TALES is the promise is still more new material, which takes on a completely different form. The book concludes with a prose excerpt from QUEST FOR THE SPARK, which itself has now been released. Written by Sniegoski with sporadic illustrations from Smith, it will be the subject of an entirely separate essay in two weeks, so I won’t talk too much about it here. Suffice it to say, but Scholastic eventually decided this BONE thing really did have legs.

BONE has become an integral part of my comics experience, and this serves as the tiniest of introductions to it. Please, by all means, if you haven’t read any of it yourself, like my friend all those years ago, I heartily encourage you to give it a try. You’ll be entering a whole new world.