BOOK REVIEW - Bone

Bone:

The Complete Cartoon Epic in 1 volume

Cartoon Books Publishing

Jeff Smith

Bone is a sprawling comedic fantasy comic with many darker elements. It was serialized from 1991 - 2004, but also came out as a single (and fairly inexpensive) volume soon after the final installment was released. From the initial description, Bone seemed like a kind of book I would dislike - I'm not a fantasy fan in the least, I usually don't like comics or graphic novels (with a few notable exceptions), and a dark, comic fantasy sounded exactly like something I'd want to avoid.

But when it made a lot of peoples "best books of the decade" list, and even more "top 10 graphic novels of all time", I thought it'd be worth a look. It opens on three very cartoony cousins fleeing from Boneville after "Phoney" Bone pulled a big scam and gets them run out of town. They get separated and lost in the desert, and end up in different locations around a forest with very normal-looking humans and animals. Sure the animals talk, but the new locale is far more mundane-seeming than the Bone cousins.

The story progresses a bit slowly at first, but is still highly engrossing from the get-go. After a comedic race, ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. It took me a little while to get to this point, but once it I did my free time was completely devoted to reading Bone. The highly stylized characters, and the fact that EVERY character provides comedic relief to the dark script, makes it a very quick, very entertaining read. The plot draws heavily from the other fantasy plots, but there are enough twists to make it fresh.

Alright, screw it. I can analyze this book to death. The point is, it's good. It's fairly cheap for being almost 1400 pages, and it's a quick read. Took me 3 days. It's basically Jeff Smith's life work, and it shows. Bone is extremely well done, and you should read it if it at all sounds interesting to you.

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