Phoney Bone and the rest.

Feeling just a touch under the weather, so I’ll be keeping an eye on that. I’ll get cleaned up and go for a walk or something, but no gym excursions today. Yeah, yeah, now it sounds like I’m making excuses.

Last week I got to read Jeff Smith’s full collection of Bone (Jeff Smith signed my copy! Spelled my name right and everything!), the fantasy adventure/fish out of water tale of the cartoonish Bone cousins who find themselves in a valley (called the Valley) at the centre of a magical war between humankind and the rat creatures.

I kept going on about how I’d never read it, but for the first hundred pages (granted it’s a 13 hundred page book) I knew every panel. I read it in Disney Adventures magazine when I was little. Not that I’d ever forgotten that, but I just assumed I was getting things out of order, that I’d missed all the comics about the Bones adventures in Boneville, and other things like that. Nope, pretty much a straight line.

While normally I really don’t like the magic/fantasy thing, Bone is easily an exception. In most of my experience, let’s say, The Lord of the Rings books, the main character is always useless (even though everyone gushes about how important they are). Frodo carries the ring to Mordor, makes questionable decisions about the company he keeps, and keeps nearly falling into the clutches of evil. Yes, Gandalf said the ring would make him evil, but seriously, just hop on an eagle, fly to that volcano, and finish it up, bing bang boom.

Stupid giant Eagles. If they weren’t around, maybe I wouldn’t have this problem.

But yeah, in relation to Bone- sure, the Bone cousins don’t exactly bring a lot of skills to the table (although Phoney Bone’s deductive skill may have saved the whole universe at the end…) but that’s okay because the gag is those three characters are completely in the wrong strip. They should be in some gag a day comic, where the worst thing that happens is someone gets a delicious pie in the face, not facing off against a Locust possessed Dragon that created the world.

There’s a lot of exposition, but in the context of having nearly every page stand on its own, I’m very okay with it. There are a couple of times when the humans get a little angsty and therefore unhelpfully stupid, but I guess that’s the human condition.

I love how everyone’s so down on Phoney Bone for his various money making schemes, but when the chips are down he’s always there for his cousins. There’s always that beat panel where he looks at whatever treasure he’s about to sacrifice, but most times when that kind of character is around they really try to play it for drama and only barely make it in time to save the hero or whomever. Phoney Bone takes that beat to look at treasure, then immediately goes to help out with plenty of time to spare.

Rounding out the Bones is Phone Bone (specifically NOT Phoney Bone) and Smiley Bone, who sort of reminds me of Jeff Smith himself… just in that happy-go-lucky way about him. Though I’m sure he’d rather be emblematized by Phone Bone, that guy is the hero, more or less. The sensible one. The one that, apparently, COULD have stayed in the Valley to rule over it with the hot princess (!).

That was actually a big surprise- Phone Bone spent much of the book crazy about Thorn (the princess, not that they always knew that), and then nearing the end appeared to be really torn between going home to Boneville and staying in the Valley (with Thorn). But at the end he’s like “Of COURSE I’m going back to Boneville with you, Cousins!” And Thorn isn’t surprised at all- she must be amazingly humble- she’s like “oh yeah, I had the suspicion that you’d go back home with your cousins.”

I just think staying should have been considered a bit better is all, what with all the build up to leaving at the end.

No question, this was a great book. It’s interesting to see Jeff Smith’s (you can’t really call him “Jeff” or “Mr. Smith”… how would you know who I was talking about?) own interest in multiple worlds, the difference between what we’re told of Boneville versus the Valley, the physical world versus the dreaming/ghost realm, just because he’s delving into that even more with his follow up project “Rasl” about a dimension hopping art thief.

I wonder how long that story will go on for. It’s only really just started- Bone went for around 13 years!

I’m a little sad, by the way, that I’ve finished the main story of Bone. I think I heard there were some bonus material issues or something just for fun, but regardless, here’s this one huge comic, according to Time “one of the top ten Graphic Novels”… uh, maybe they said “in existence” that I’d never got to read… and now I have. There aren’t that many more sort of ultimate, history defining comic collections that I have to check out.

Even my missing Squadron Supreme has sort of turned up, in that my buddy now acknowledges that he must have it. That’s almost worth me having lost my origin of Impulse comic collection.

Slash trade paperback.

NOT slash graphic novel, which is a pretentious name for something that, sure, thinks poorly of itself and therefore tries to build itself up with a big name, but is really more than good enough to be considered on its own merits. “Graphic Novel”. A comic is a comic is a comic. And it’s a fantastic medium.

I’m biased maybe.

Argh this one girl, who I always take special care to speak to on her birthday to the point where she expects my call now, just fully wished some dude a happy birthday – while having forgotten mine for, what? The past two years?

What (also) really bothers me is the fact that I know I’d be less bothered by this if she weren’t so hot. So now I’M the jerk.