Recommendation: Bone

Well, it finally happened. I decided that as long as I am talking so much about comics, I might as well put together a few recommendations. But I didn't want this to be a completely masturbatory process for me, so I came up with a few ground rules to make these recommendations a bit more palatable.

1. All recommendations will be self-contained stories. They may be part of a series or they may have sequels, but you won't feel like you are getting an incomplete story when you read it. If they are superhero stories, I will assume the reader has a passing knowledge of comic books gained from television and movies. I will recommend nothing that requires background knowledge.

2. They must be readily accessible. I will not recommend anything that is out of print or is only available in single-issues. I will assume my readers find being in a comic store as uncomfortable as being in a twelve-year-old boy's treehouse. (Furthermore, I will assume my readers find being in a twelve-year-old boy's treehouse uncomfortable.)

3. They must be relatively inexpensive. Of course, prices wildly vary for comics and cost/benefit analysis should also take into account page count amongst many other factors, but I will not be recommending any comic that I believe is unreasonably expensive for the casual comic reader. This includes oversized hardcover editions marketed to hardcore collectors and other forms of price gouging.

That said, let's begin with my first recommendation: Jeff Smith's Bone. This is a young adult comic in the fantasy genre starring several oddly cartoon-ish protagonists collectively known as the Bones from Boneville. Leading the group is the humble Fone Bone accompanied by his cousins, the greedy Phoncible P. "Phoney" Bone, and the goofy, cigar-chomping Smiley Bone. After Phoney's failed campaign for mayor led to the group being run out of town, they wander into a mysterious valley full of strange humans where they are pursued by evil rat creatures and locusts. They take refuge with a kindly, young woman and her tough-as-nails "Gran'ma Ben." They soon find themselves drawn into a mythological adventure to stop the Lord of the Locusts to wake the world dragon Mim and thus end the world... but not before Phoney tries to rig the great cow race to cheat the local villagers.

Bone has won an unpresidented 10 Eisner Awards and 11 Harvey Awards, the industry's two most highly regarded accolades. In their list of Top Ten Graphic Novels of All Time, Time Magazine called it "as sweeping as the Lord of the Rings cycle, but much funnier." I agree whole-heartedly. Like any great fantasy novel, reading Bone is an experience that makes you feel like you were there, and Smith's characters are so rich and dynamic that, by the end, they feel more like friends.

This comic is available in two main formats. For $39.95 ($25.62 from Overstock, $26.37 from Amazon), you can buy Bone: The One Volume edition. This collects all 1300 pages of the series in its entirety in the original black and white. I own this volume and it is one of my favorites. However, for $9.99, you can get the colorized volumes released by Scholastic Press. They look beautiful, but with 9 volumes, that comes out to a total of $90. Until they have the colorized version in a single volume, I think I'll stick with black and white.

Further web links:
Boneville - The Official Bone website
Bone games from Scholastic