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.
This beautiful, oversized book, BONE Deluxe Edition Part One: The Valley, will be 352 pages comprising volumes 1 and 2 of the BONE graphic novels: Out from Boneville and The Great Cow Race. These deluxe collections will be 12.5 x 8.75 trade paperbacks housed in a full color slipcase. The interiors will be black and white as originally presented, but larger than they have ever been printed before! Bonus material includes all illustrated vignettes, photos, early scripts, drawings, articles, reviews and additional pages that appeared in the original graphic novels, as well as a color gallery of all the original covers of the issues contained in this first ultimate edition of BONE!
Just like in our last Deluxe Library Edition titled THORN: The Complete Proto-BONE College Strips from 1982-1986, there will be a full color bonus section called Tales from the Inkwell, a behind the scenes look at the journey of this collection, BONE and Cartoon Books.
BONE tells the story of three misfit cousins - Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone, who are run out of Boneville and find themselves lost in a vast uncharted desert. They make their way into a deep, forested valley filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures. With the help of the mysterious Thorn, her tough-as-nails Gran'ma Ben and the Great Red Dragon, the boys do their best to survive in the middle of brewing trouble between the valley's denizens. It will be the longest - but funniest - year of their lives!
BONE Deluxe Edition Part One: The Valley, will be released July 2025.
Look for these future Cartoon Books publications: BONE Deluxe Editions Part Two: Phoney Strikes Back, Part Three: Friends and Enemies, Part Four: The Queen of Dreams as well as a Deluxe Library Edition of RASL, and the continuation of TUKI (Book Three of Six) coming soon!