Bone #1

History

Jeff Smith developed the Bone characters across four years of daily strips in Ohio State University's student newspaper, The Lantern, which were later collected in a 1,000-copy trade paperback called Thorn: Tales from the Lantern — essentially a proto-Bone in print. After newspaper syndicates repeatedly rejected his submissions, Smith sold his stake in Character Builders Inc. — the Columbus animation studio he had co-founded — to fund self-publication; he later cited the commercial and artistic successes of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Art Spiegelman's Maus as proof that a long-form comic with a defined beginning, middle, and end could work. Smith borrowed enough money from a bank to print three issues at once (the minimum run for the first issue was 3,000 copies, against initial orders of roughly 1,100), and shrewdly secured a blurb from Will Eisner — who compared the work to George Herriman and Walt Kelly combined — for the Diamond catalog solicitation of issue #1. When the logistical demands of running a one-man publishing operation threatened to delay the book, Smith's wife Vijaya Iyer resigned from her Silicon Valley startup position to serve as president of Cartoon Books, stabilizing distribution and freeing Smith to focus exclusively on the art.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearances of all principal characters: Fone Bone, Phoncible P. 'Phoney' Bone, Smiley Bone, the Red Dragon, the Rat Creatures, and Ted the Bug all debut in this single issue.
• Published July 1991 by Cartoon Books, a company Jeff Smith founded specifically to self-publish the series; the first print is identified by its red Bone logo on the cover.
• The first printing had a press run of approximately 3,000 copies — the printer's minimum order — against initial direct-market orders of roughly 1,100 copies, resulting in very limited distribution.
• Smith was the sole creator of every element in the issue: script, pencils, inks, lettering, cover art, and editorial — one of the most complete solo creator credits in mainstream American comics.
• Issue #1 was reprinted more than ten times, with subsequent printings numbered inside the book; most issues through #12 received multiple printings to meet growing demand.
• The complete series ran 55 issues from 1991 to 2004, was collected into nine volumes and a single omnibus, and was briefly co-published by Image Comics for issues #21–27 before returning to Cartoon Books.
• In 2005, Scholastic launched its Graphix imprint with a colorized edition of Out from Boneville (collecting issues #1–6), colored by Steve Hamaker; Graphix went on to become the leading all-ages graphic-novel imprint in the North American book market.
• Netflix acquired adaptation rights in October 2019, but the planned animated series was ultimately discontinued as of April 2022.

Full credits

Key issues in Bone

Variants (8)