Overview

The Secret Origin of Jeff Smith's BONE Comes to Light! NYT Bestselling Author Smith Returns to his Roots with a New Collection of His THORN College Strips! Cartoon Books announces THORN: The Complete Proto- BONE College Strips from 1982 to 1986, and Other Early Drawings, reprinting the entire run of his earliest rendering of the world-famousBONE characters for the first time. The comic strips reveal an early version of BONE called THORN that was written for a college audience in the 1980s. THORN appeared in the pages of The Ohio State University's student newspaper The Lantern. A few were reprinted in a self-published 1983 book called THORN: Tales from The Lantern. Another small selection was published in 2008's limited edition fundraiser for OSU's Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum called Before BONE. Both books are long out of print and sell at collector's prices. There has never been an official, complete run published until now. This beautiful edition includes plenty of bonus material such as recently discovered early drawings of the BONE characters, essays and interviews.

Full Product Details

9781888963861

Table of Contents

Reviews

""Smith reprints the complete 1980's run of his precocious college comic strip THORN, much of which he later reworked into his fantasy series Bone. In his introduction, Smith comments that ""where Bone is a novel, THORN is more like a variety show."" The freewheeling fantasy indulges in anachronistic references and fourth wall-breaking humor, as characters climb out of the page to argue with their creator, become ""trapped in real life"", and cross over into another Lantern strip. Though [THORN] is most valuable as a blueprint for what was to come in Bone, it's got charm enough to stand on its own.""-Publishers Weekly ""Smith's Bone is an era-defining masterpiece, and like an era, it, too, has a prehistory. That prehistory is laid bare and examined with archaeological care in this collection of THORN ... Packed with a comprehensive array of supplements, including history, analyses, interviews, formative work, and comparative studies ... for collectors, enthusiasts, and anyone who remembers fondly the years spent with those characters in this world, it is a major event indeed.""-Booklist Starred Review

"""Smith reprints the complete 1980's run of his precocious college comic strip THORN, much of which he later reworked into his fantasy series Bone. In his introduction, Smith comments that ""where Bone is a novel, THORN is more like a variety show."" The freewheeling fantasy indulges in anachronistic references and fourth wall-breaking humor, as characters climb out of the page to argue with their creator, become ""trapped in real life"", and cross over into another Lantern strip. Though [THORN] is most valuable as a blueprint for what was to come in Bone, it's got charm enough to stand on its own.""-Publishers Weekly ""Smith's Bone is an era-defining masterpiece, and like an era, it, too, has a prehistory. That prehistory is laid bare and examined with archaeological care in this collection of THORN ... Packed with a comprehensive array of supplements, including history, analyses, interviews, formative work, and comparative studies ... for collectors, enthusiasts, and anyone who remembers fondly the years spent with those characters in this world, it is a major event indeed.""-Booklist Starred Review"

Author Information

Jeff Smith is the writer & artist of comics and graphic novels like BONE, RASL, TUKI, SHAZAM: The Monster Society of Evil, ROSE and Tall Tales. Both BONE and RASL were self-published and are New York Times Bestsellers. BONE began the current YA Graphic Novel explosion by launching Scholastic Books' Graphix imprint and has won 48 national and international awards including 10 Eisner Awards and 11 Harvey Awards and has been published around the world in 33 countries. RASL won an Eisner for Best Graphic Novel. The webcomic version of TUKI won the National Cartoonists Award for Best Online Comic in 2014.

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