Bone (comics)

Bone
Cover of the first Bone issue; the same image is used for the cover of Bone: Handbook and for Bone: Out From Boneville.
Publication information
Publisher	Cartoon Books (self-published) Image Comics (issues #21–27)
Schedule	Bimonthly, with several delays
Format	Limited series
Genre	Comedy, high fantasy
Publication date	July 1991 – June 2004
Number of issues	55
Main character(s)	The Bone cousins
Creative team
Writer(s)	Jeff Smith
Artist(s)	Jeff Smith
Colorist(s)	Steve Hamaker

Bone is an independently published comic book series, written and illustrated by Jeff Smith, originally serialized in 55 irregularly released issues from 1991 to 2004.

Smith's black-and-white drawings were inspired by animated cartoons and comic strips, a notable influence being Walt Kelly's Pogo: "I was ... a big fan of Carl Barks and Pogo, so it was just natural for me to want to draw that kind of mixture of Walt Kelly and Mœbius." Accordingly, the story is singularly characterized by a combination of both light-hearted comedy and dark, epic fantasy: Time has called the series "as sweeping as the Lord of the Rings cycle, but much funnier." The series was published bimonthly with some delays from June 1991 to June 2004. The series was self-published by Smith's Cartoon Books for issues #1 through #19, by Image Comics from issues #20 to #28, and back to Cartoon Books for issues #29 through #55 (the final one).

Bone has received numerous awards, among them ten Eisner Awards and eleven Harvey Awards.

The series centers on the Bone cousins, white, bald cartoon caricatures. In the opening pages of “Out from Boneville” the three Bone cousins, an avaricious and greedy Phoncible P. "Phoney" Bone, a goofy cigar-smoking Smiley Bone, and an everyman character Fone Bone, have been run out of their hometown of Boneville after Phoney's campaign for mayor went awry. After crossing a desert, the cousins are separated by a sea of locusts and individually ending up in the mysterious Valley and must make their way across the fantasy landscape pursued by rat creatures (Fone Bone uses a mysterious hand-drawn map that Smiley had found). They joyously reunite at a local tavern called Barrelhaven, where they are taken in by a mysterious girl named Thorn and her even more enigmatic grandmother. Fone Bone instantly develops a crush on Thorn when he meets her, and repeatedly attempts to express his love through poetry. As they stay longer in the valley, they encounter humans and other creatures who are threatened by a dark entity, the Lord of the Locusts. The Bones, trying to escape to Boneville, are quickly drawn into the events around them, compelling them on a hero's journey to help free the Valley.