Three exiled bones find adventure in a fantastic valley in Jeff Smith's Bone, a comic series that ran from 1991 to 2004. People had been recommending this one to me for decades but it was over the course of this summer that I finally got around to reading it. I'm sure glad I did, it's amazing. And I can see why so many people recommended it to me specifically, though many of those people were in social circles that have evaporated over the years for one reason or another. The only person I'm still in contact with whom I remember recommending it confessed to me that she'd never actually read it herself. It's kind of too bad I have no-one I can tell, "Wow, thanks for the recommendation!" Unless one of you still reads this blog.
Anyway, it's funny how well it aligns with the research paper I'm writing on H. Rider Haggard's She and film adaptations of it. One of the reasons I've pinpointed for the continual failure of the film adaptations to capture the magic of the original novel is none of them understand how important the narrator's--not just ugly--but bizarre physical features are. They provide an important contrast to the titular character's supernatural beauty and this is a dichotomy that recurs in fiction. She directly references Beauty and the Beast and in the 20th century you have Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy movies, virtually every family sitcom with a fat, Falstaffian patriarch paired with a beautiful wife, and Bone.
The three bone characters--Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone--are based on characters Jeff Smith created as a child but the influence of Disney characters, particularly Carl Bark's Uncle Scrooge comics, is unmistakable. You could look at the three characters as versions of Mickey, Goofy, and Scrooge. They could also be Blondie, Tuco, and Angel Eyes, I suppose. For most of the comic it seemed like Fone Bone was good, Smiley Bone was neutral, and Phoney Bone was evil.
We learn the three bone cousins were run out of their hometown of Boneville after Phoney's disastrous mayoral campaign. So they wander into "The Valley", a place with more of a high fantasy vibe. The bones themselves fit a more cartoonish aesthetic and comedic sensibility. Fone meets a beautiful, relatively realistically drawn girl named Thorn and develops a crush on her. I doubt I'm the first one to get a Roger and Jessica vibe from the two.
The series has been compared to Lord of the Rings because a mythology about the foundation of the valley and dragons and various other magical creatures gradually takes over. The climax involves an all out war with elaborate battle scenes. Also like Tolkien, Smith contrives many smaller, effectively charming vignettes, woven into the larger tale. There's an adventure in which Fone and Smiley have to take a baby rat creature back to its homeland--rat creatures are basically the Valley's version of the orc. There's a gigantic mountain lion called Roque Ja (or Rock Jaw) they must escape with the help of a dozen baby animals. There's Thorn's recurring dreams and her gradual realisation that she has an unexpectedly grand destiny. Through all this, Smith manages to maintain a fidelity to the two contrasting tones. One of my favourite interplays is between Phoney Bone and the world of the Valley. Phoney is constantly contriving petty, cartoon size schemes in this big beautiful fantasy world. He tricks the people of a town called Barrelhaven into following him by calling himself a dragonslayer, knowing full well that the dragons are absolutely no threat to the villagers. When the team are engaged in a desperate, treacherous journey through "Ghost Circles", Phoney is driven on by dreams of riches in the capital city of Atheia, where he eventually enlists Smiley's aid in stamping currency with his own likeness.
All along, the question of how Fone Bone's attraction to Thorn is going to resolve is a constant source of tension. If there is one flaw in the series, it's that Smith ultimately chooses a resolution that satisfies a certain thematic concept while neglecting the logic of the story itself. But maybe he bit off more than he could chew. In any case, the story as a whole is still lovely.
Sonnet 2010
An olive sea was black across the crust
The River Cheese was one that flowed through Gaul
One time, a treasure brought a sword to rust
Some silent shadows wait along the mall
Acrylic night describes a lonesome scene
The moon's a frozen skull above the blur
A fella's nose is like a friendly bean
And down the alley rings an iron spur
His steed was left beside the rotten inn
Inside you'll find a dozen girls and cats
And six or seven scraggly, drunken men
With cards and bullets hid beneath their hats
Before the stroke of twelve, he steps inside
Now here's a town where many ghosts abide
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