Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume
by Jeff Smith
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jeff SmithBrand: Cartoon Books
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-09
ISBN: 188896314X
Number of pages: 1300
Publisher: Cartoon Books
Book Reviews of Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume
Book Review: The entire original cartoon epic in its original B&W glory
Summary: 5 Stars
I find it interesting that a significant number of those giving this less than five-stars complain about this being in black and white and not in color as with the smaller volumes. There is a great reason for this: They were published in Black and White to begin with! The colorized volumes are an addition. Now, I personally love the original pen and ink drawings. If someone wants the colorized versions instead, fine. But please don't labor under the impression that what is published entire in this volume is a diminished version of BONE. It is, and will always remain, the original version.
Apart from the quibbling over B&W versus color, there is no debate that this is one of the truly great achievements in the history of comic art. I know of no very long comic story that can match this for quality of story as well as epic scope. Visually the story is deeply indebted to Walt Kelly; narratively to Tolkein. It really does read and feel like "Pogo meets LORD OF THE RINGS." It is also a very strange universe. The world feels medieval and premodern, yet Fone Bone, the novel's main protagonist, carries with him his beloved copy of Melville's MOBY DICK. This oddity just makes the entire affair all that much more enjoyable.
"Epic" is a word that is thrown around a lot, so often that it is applied where it doesn't often truly belong. But Jeff Smith's BONE is as epic as any graphic work ever published. I reread some of the early pages of the book immediately after finishing it and it had some of the same sense of having traveled league after league that you get at the end of WAR AND PEACE or LES MISERABLES. This is a rich, textured, detailed, yet ultimately unified story. Some graphic novelist seem to some degree to be making up or altering the story as they go along. Smith seems to have had the end in mind at the beginning, an amazing achievement given the book's 13-year range of publication. Like any epic novel, it is filled with characters, not just the Bones from Boneville, but Thorn, Grandma, Lucius, a red dragon (in the original black and white his color is often refered to), a rat creature appropriately named Bartleby, to a remarkably simple to draw bug named Ted. On the final pages there is an overpowering sense of how far they have all gone and precisely how much has happened. The book ends with a sense of enormity unequaled in graphic art. I loved Brian K. Vaughan's Y: THE LAST MAN, but much of what happened in that huge work could have been excised without harming the main storyline. But virtually no part of BONE could be removed without lessening it as a work of art. I would argue that it is probably the longest completely unified long story ever told in graphic form. There are longer graphic series (though not many), like Bill Willingham's magnificent (and still ongoing) FABLES, but it tells a series of stories, not a single one.
Jeff Smith's BONE should be on the shortest of short lists of graphic novels to own, read, and treasure. It routinely appears on lists of the all time greatest graphic novels and should continue to do so as long as such lists are made. My only complaint with it is that it came to an end. Jeff Smith did do a prequel entitled ROSE, dealing with the youthful adventures of Thorn's grandmother, but it isn't the same. It is a mark of how great this work is that you regret that we can't continue with Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone (not to mention Bartleby) on their adventures. There have been other Bone spin offs, but none featuring the main Bone characters of this novel.
I'll end by noting that Smith has sold the film rights to BONE to Warner Brothers and they are currently working to bring it to the screen, most likely as a CGI film. Smith is apparently going to be quite involved, so there is good reason to hope that it will be a worthy project.
Summary of Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume
An American graphic novel first! The complete 1300-page epic adventure from start to finish in one deluxe trade paperback. Three modern cartoon cousins get lost in a pre-technological valley, speanding a year there making new friends and out-running dangerous enemies. Their many adventures include crossing the local people in The Great Cow Race, and meeting a giant mountain lion called RockJaw: Master of the Eastern Border. They learn about sacrifice and hardship in The Ghost Circles and finally discover their own true natures in the climatic journey to The Crown of Horns.Children's Books
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