“This Is a Well-Loved Book”: Weighing (in on) Jeff Smith’s Bone
“This Is a Well-Loved Book”: Weighing (in on) Jeff Smith’s Bone
This chapter considers the production history of Jeff Smith's Bone, a 1,332-page epic comics text that has been published in multiple editions designed to appeal to both children and adult readers. It argues that the blending of disparate genres, mediums, narratives, conventions, and illustrative styles that characterizes Bone—telling an epic narrative in the comics medium; Smith's use of his training as an animator to create perfectly timed gags on paper instead of film; interspersing slapstick comedy with a dark adventure narrative and meditations on dreams and dreaming; making a pretty girl an epic hero, her grandmother a warrior, and her great aunt a powerful villain in a literary form long dominated by male heroes who are often preserving the honor of princesses in need of rescue or protection; and Smith's use of iconic figures instead of realistically drawn characters to tell a serious story—is what allows Bone to take several different physical forms and to attract a broad audience of readers from different age groups.
Keywords: comics, epic, Bone, Jeff Smith, children's literature, young adult novels
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