Posted in: Comics | Tagged: bone, jeff smith, Thorn

Jeff Smith to Collect All His Pre-Bone Thorn Strips for the First Time

While Bone creator Jeff Smith attended the Ohio State University, he created a comic strip "Thorn" for the student newspaper, The Lantern.

While Bone creator Jeff Smith attended the Ohio State University, he created a comic strip called "Thorn" for the student newspaper, The Lantern, which included some of the characters who later featured in Bone. There was a partial collection, with a thousand print run, but nothing since Bone became a big thing. And copies have sold at Heritage Auctions for $13,200 back in 2020.

Now Jeff Smith has tweeted the news, "There's never been a complete reprinting of my proto-Bone college strips…but that's about to change. We'll make an official announcement soon!" Which could save people over thirteen thousand dollars if they want a copy.

Also last year, Jeff Smith signed a deal with David Saylor and Cassandra Pelham Fulton at Scholastic/Graphix for a new Bone graphic novel to be published in the autumn. Bone: More Tall Tales is to be a graphic anthology of stories written by Jeff Smith and Tom Sniegoski, and drawn by Jeff Smith, Stan Sakai, Katie Cook, Matt Smith, and Scott Brown. Bone: More Tall Tales will include stories about the Bone cousins and their Rat Creature pal share stories around a campfire with a group of young scouts. Jeff Smith's agent and partner, Vijaya Iyer at Cartoon Books negotiated the deal.

Bone was first self-published by Jeff Smith following the Dave Sim model from 1991 to 2004, 55 issues in all, with Image Comics publishing issues #21-27, before returning to Cartoon Books for issues #28-55. The series was also coloured and reprinted as part of Disney Adventures, gathering ten Eisner Awards during its run. The series follows Fone Bone and his two cousins, Phoncible P. "Phoney" Bone and Smiley Bone through a fantasy land, trying to get by and find purpose in a classic cartoony fashion.

From February 2005 to January 2009, Scholastic Graphix began reissuing in both hardcover and paperback the individual volumes in full colour by Steve Hamaker for North America, while from 2006, HarperCollins began publishing the colour editions for the UK market.

In 2008, Warner Bros. Pictures bought the film rights to the series, with three planned CGI animated films, to be written by Patrick Sean Smith, and P. J. Hogan was attached to direct, though in 2016 Mark Osborne was hired as director for Warner Animation Group, as well as writing the films along with Adam Kline. Dropped by Warners, in 2019, the project was picked up by Netflix for an animated series. However, in April 2022, production on the series was canceled during a reorganization of Netflix Animation, along with a number of stopped series and films.

So now it is back to the comic books again, and new Bone stories for 2023…

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