Does that feel like yesterday or a million years ago? This year marks 30 years since first issue of Bone came out. On the occasion of Bone’s 30th anniversary, Polygon sat down with Smith to talk about his comic’s legacy his newest book, Tuki: Fight for Fire and the rise of comic books from back issues to book fairs. But when he started out, Smith says, he just wanted to get his work to a place where it was always in print and available - not something that came easy in the world of American comics until, well, Bone and its cohort of wildly creative, self-published comic books showed it was possible.

Now, the series is finally reaching that nadir of the modern media landscape: a comic book adapted to the screen. In 2005, just as Smith had finally put out the story’s conclusion, Bone was picked up for publication in color by Scholastic, the undisputed monarch of the school book fair, becoming the first supernova of the YA graphic novel boom. Although Smith didn’t intend the comic to be purely kids’ fare, Bone saw its first “overnight” popularity from republication in Disney Adventures magazine through the late ’90s.

It’s also a little bit of a talking animal book?īone defies categorization, yet developed a firm grip on success, particularly in places where very few American comics had found success before.

It’s also a comedy adventure in the tradition of Carl Barks’ duck comics, with drinking and gambling thrown in. The dragon-laden tale is high fantasy, but less of the classic Western knights and swords fairy tale and more the Ghibli-esque yarn of young women with strange destinies and dark creatures in the woods. To describe Bone, Jeff Smith’s 55-issue comic series published between 19, as a fantasy series is technically correct, but far from complete.

Author of the bone people