This is a massive book, over 1500 pages long, consisting of all 55 issues of the regular series. Its written and drawn by Jeff Smith, no one I'd heard of before.
I didn't like it at first, but I'm up to page 748 and now loving it. I think if I was reading it issue by issue I would have given up because of the slow movement of the story. The characters are great, and the writer uses a sense of history - things which have happened in the past - to great effect. Our three heroes are the Bone brothers. I gather they are sort of meant to be humans, but rendered like odd cartoons so they stand out from the reality of their fantastic surroundings. We have dragons, big talking mountain lions, fairy princesses, mysterious cult warrios, a hooded mastermind, the Lord of the Locusts, a big monster called Kingdok, and the stupid, stupid rat creatures. The best character of all is a leaf insect called Ted.
Why is Bone so good though? Its not so much the story, but its because of the way its done. This is a great summary, better than I could have put it, from Silver Bullet:
http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/reviews/97771735450399.htmQuote:
So I was watching North by Northwest on dvd the other night, and it may be a cliché, but watching the movie on dvd is like watching it for the first time. DVD preserves the aspect ratio of the movie into a letterbox format, crisps and correct the colors to make the viewing an experience rather than just entertainment. As you watch North by Northwest, you realize what a maestro Hitchcock was and how he understood sequential artwork to borrow a phrase. How does Jeff Smith's Bone relate to North by Northwest? I'll tell you.
The static artwork of Bone creates a filmstrip which manifests the illusion of movement and takes into account a physical quirk of evolution called the persistence of vision. Change a photo or picture incrementally. Put those graphics side by side, and the brain will fill in the movement between the frames. Take a look at the scene on the mountaintop with Rose contending against the Rat Creatures. She actually looks like she's running down the mountainside. It takes Jeff Smith nine panels to make this feeling happen. He cuts very little of the increment and preserves the picture for the brain to fill in the blanks.
Like Hitchcock, Mr. Smith knows it's all good. North by Northwest isn't just suspense and neither is Bone. Both work in a plausible love story. With Bone it's more innocent. This is the issue fans have been waiting for ever since Fone Bone issued a Valentine upon first seeing Thorn. Like the Hitchcock film, with the revelation for this issue, Mr. Smith doesn't lose the roller coaster ride of the conflict. In fact Fone Bone makes a good symbolic substitute for George Kaplan: the every-man who is caught up in a situation that has already been engraved in stone yet changes those etchings for the better.
Every word needs to be spoken, but dialogue does not always need to be heard. In North by Northwest George Kaplan holds Eve Kendall's head while kissing her. In a later scene, he kisses her but because he is not yet convinced of her innocence, he does not hold her head. They don't speak a word in this scene. Hitchcock knows that the viewer is smart enough to catch the clues. The reunion between Smiley and Bartleby in Bone is not telegraphed by text. The scene gains impact through wordless characterization. The visual characterization of Bone creates uncertainty by the way character's are positioned, and when the habitual characterization once more surfaces Mr. Smith dissuades you from the book's climax.
Bone is not only a great story with accomplished artwork. It is a filmmaker's, a novelist's and a comic book creator's text book.
The art can be a little cartoony, but not a single panel is wasted. Its got a superb economy of pace: the real craftsmanship in this text is not the story, the dialgue, the characterisation or the art, but the panel layouts. Its topshelf cinematography, but in a comic.
The fact that the entire thing comes in one big volume means no waiting between issues either - of the single issue or the tpbs (which drives me nuts, as I like a complete story).
More info at the website: www.boneville.com
Highly recommended at 8 out of 10.
