Cartoon Books

Jeff Smith
Jeff Smith with life-size RASL figure at the opening of CCAD MIX Event in Columbus, Ohio, September 27, 2013
Born	(1960-02-27) February 27, 1960 (age 56) McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, United States
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Cartoonist
Notable works	Bone, Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, RASL, Tüki Save the Humans
Awards	2 National Cartoonists Society Comic Book Awards 11 Harvey Awards 10 Eisner Awards

Jeff Smith (born February 27, 1960) is an American cartoonist. He is the creator of the self-published comic book series Bone.

Jeff Smith was born in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania to William Earl Smith and Barbara Goodsell. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio.

Smith learned about cartooning from comic strips, comic books, and animated TV shows. The strip he found to be the most entertaining was Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts, which he had his father read to him every Sunday, and which inspired him to learn to read. Smith was also inspired by Scrooge McDuck creator Carl Barks, whom Smith calls a "natural comic genius" for his ability to move characters effectively from panel to panel, and for their expressiveness. Alluding to the influence of Barks' influence on Bone, Smith commented, "I always wanted Uncle Scrooge to go on a longer adventure. I thought, 'Man, if you could just get a comic book of that quality, the length of say, War and Peace, or The Odyssey or something, that would be something I would love to read, and even as a kid I looked everywhere for that book, that Uncle Scrooge story that was 1,100 pages long." Another seminal influence began when Smith was nine, and he saw The Pogo Special Birthday Special on TV, which was created by Walt Kelly and Chuck Jones, whom he would later call "two of my most favorite people". The day after that program aired, a girl brought her father's Pogo book to school and gave it to Smith, who says it "changed comics" for him. Smith keeps that book on a table next to his drawing board today, and refers to Kelly as his "biggest influence in writing comics".

Smith has cited Moby Dick as his favorite book, citing its multi-layered narrative and symbolism, and placed numerous references to it in Bone. He has also cited Huckleberry Finn as a story after which he attempted to pattern Bone structurally, explaining, "the kinds of stories I’m drawn to, like Huckleberry Finn, are the ones that start off very simple, almost like children’s stories...but as it goes on, it gets a little darker, and the themes become a little more sophisticated and more complex—and those are really the kinds of stories that just get me going." Other influences in this regard include the original Star Wars trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and the classic fairy tales and mythologies that inspired those works.