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Official Site: Jeff Smith

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

Smith's black-and-white drawings were inspired by animated cartoon and comic strip, 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 Moebius." Accordingly, the story is singularly characterized by an effective combination of both light-hearted comedy and dark, epic fantasy: Time Magazine 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 for the 19 issues, then printed on Image Comics until issue #29, in which it reverted to its original self-publishing company, Cartoon Books.

Bone has received numerous award, among them ten Eisner Award and eleven Harvey Award. In 2005, Time chose the 1,342 page compilation as one of the 10 best English language graphic novels ever written.

The series centers around the Bone cousins, white, bald cartoon caricature. In the opening pages of Bone: Out from Boneville the three Bone cousins—avaricious Phoncible P. "Phoney" Bone, goofy cigar-smoking Smiley Bone, and everyman character Fone Bone—are run out of their hometown of Boneville after Phoney decides to run for mayor and built a balloon on top the head of a statue of Boneville's founder. A strong wind made the balloon break the head off of the statue and all the townspeople ran Phoncible, Smiley, and Fone out of town. After crossing a desert, the cousins are separated by a sea of locust and individually ending up in the mysterious Valley and must make their way across the fantasy landscape pursued by rat creature. They joyously reunite at a local village 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 prove his love through poetry. As they stay longer in the valley, they encounter humans and other creatures who are threatened by a decrepit dark entity, the Lord of the Locusts. The Bones are quickly drawn into the events around them, compelling them on a hero's journey to help save the world.

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