Bone by Jeff Smith (A Partial Review)

(Graded Reader)

Note:
I used these comics in my ESL classroom (as part of my Story Time project), so I'm including this in my Graded Reader Book Reviews list.  But this isn't actually a graded reader.  This is an authentic comic book designed for American children that I used in the ESL classroom.

Background Information / Why I Used This Book
I never read this as a kid.  It was slightly after my time.
According to Wikipedia, Bone was serialized in comic book form from 1991 to 2004, but it didn't really gain true fame until it was collected in collected bound volumes by Scholastic Inc., at which point it apparently became a staple for elementary school libraries and young adult bookstores.

I don't remember when I first heard about Bone, but I began to notice it popping up here and there. I think I had a couple comic book geek friends back home who spoke fondly of it. I had one co-worker in Cambodia who I remember used to use excerpts from the comic in his young learner lessons.  I also remember Whisky Prajer's 2014 review, which definitely piqued my interest.  To quote from part of it:

Those of us who retrieved the Bone books off our kids’ bedroom floors were astonished to see the sensibilities of Carl Barks and Walt Kelly merging seamlessly within a Lord Of The Rings epic cycle.

So I was definitely interested in Bone, but I was hesitant to use it in the classroom for a long time.
The series is long.  It's one continuous story, which ran for 55 issues in the original comic book format (and 9 volumes in the collected bound editions).  I knew that if I started it, I would never finish it.
When I use comic books in the ESL classroom, I break them down into small bite-size bits--usually about only 50 panels per lesson.  It usually takes me several lessons to get through just one single issue of a comic, so I would never be able to do all 55 issues.
But after a while, I started to run out of good ideas for comic books to do with my Young Learner class.  And I began spending progressively longer and longer searching through the Internet trying to find appropriate material.  As I wrote in my review of Marvel Classic Comics #9 "Dracula" :

My students had been really engaged, and I hated to lose that engagement by introducing a less-exciting story.
So I spent a long time (longer than I like to admit) going through all the classic comics I could find on the Internet (both old issues of Marvel Classics and Classics Illustrated.)

Eventually, I decided I actually wanted to find a never-ending story--something that would engage my students week after week, and I would never have to worry about it running out and having to find something new.
So I went with Bone.  It lasted me for one year.  Over the course of 74 lessons, we got through the first 28 issues of the comic (out of a total 55).  And then the class finished, and we had to finish there.

...and as of this writing, I've not actually read the remaining 27 issues.  Because of spoilers on Wikipedia, I know in general where the story is going, but I haven't read the issues myself yet.  I may read them someday if I ever get my hands on the physical paper copies, but I weary of reading too much stuff off of the Internet, so I stopped reading the comics when I ran out of a reason to prepare them for the classroom.*
So this is really only a review of the first 28 issues.  Consider this a partial review.

The Review
You perhaps noticed that in the quote above, Whisky Prajer describes Bone as Carl Barks + Walt Kelly + Lord of the Rings.

As bizarre as that combination sounds, this is actually a fairly accurate description.

According to Wikipedia, Jeff Smith is open about citing all 3 of these as his influences.

A major influence on Smith was Scrooge McDuck creator Carl Barks. Alluding to Barks' influence on Bone, Smith commented, "I always wanted Uncle Scrooge to go on a longer adventure. I thought, 'Man, if you could just get a comic book of that quality, the length of say, War and Peace, or The Odyssey or something, that would be something I would love to read, and even as a kid I looked everywhere for that book, that Uncle Scrooge story that was 1,100 pages long."^[17] Another influence on Bone, and Smith's biggest influence in writing comics in general, however, is Walt Kelly, creator of the comic strip Pogo.^[17][19][20]

The story starts out on the cartoonish side. The Bone cousins are on a journey across a desert.  Although there's not an exact 1-to-1 correspondence with any of Carl Barks' creations, the three Bone cousins are very much archetypal cartoon characters that could easily show up in a Disney comic book.  Phoney Bone is the greedy and scheming one.  Smiley Bone is the dumb and goofy one.  The main P.O.V. character, Fone Bone, is mostly the straight man who is constantly getting annoyed at the antics of the other two, but he is also himself comic relief, as he is always nervous and a bumbler.

The three Bone cousins then make their way into a magical valley, where they encounter all kinds of talking animal characters, many of whom speak in regional dialects that are very reminiscent of Walt Kelly's talking animals.  And if the comparison to Walt Kelly wasn't obvious enough, there is a family of possums who befriend Bone.

Stealing again from Whisky: https://whiskyprajer.blogspot.com/2014/01/rasl-jeff-smith.html

...but amid all the cartoonish antics of Fone Bone and his two cousins, another plot element is slowly introduced.  Gradually, very gradually, the Bone cousins discover that not all is as it seems in this valley, and that there is actually a looming confrontation approaching between the forces of good and the forces of evil.  And that's (obviously) where the Tolkien influence comes in.

The slow transition from cartoon slapstick to epic story is the genius of Bone.  As Whisky puts it:

The first six volumes of Bone still astonish, with their artful juxtaposition of slapstick and yearning, menace and subversion of expectations**

But having so far praised this comic so much, I now come to my criticisms:
Namely, that there is so much padding in this story.
Probably a result of the story originally being serialized in monthly comic book form, the major story beats are carefully rationed out.  Several issues will go by with nothing much happening, all building up to a major event.  But then, just when you think, "alright, now things are finally starting to happen," the story drops back again to a slow build-up.
Also, another result of monthly serialization is that each issue is full of exposition in which the characters have long conversations that rehash the plot for the benefit of any new-comer.***

The Results in the Classroom
So, good news, my students loved this story.

They always looked forward to reading it together every class, and they usually complained that we didn't read enough each time.
At least one student got so into the story that he tracked the comic down online and read ahead to the end.  So he at least got loads of language input out of this story.  Which is always the goal of these story reading projects.
And a couple of my students were able to find some of the bound volumes in bookstores in Vietnam, and bought them to read at home.  (This makes up for some of my guilt about stealing the comic from online sources.  I'm now indirectly responsible for putting some money into Jeff Smith's publisher.)

The students loved the talking animals and the crazy slapstick parts of the story.  However the initial enthusiasm for the story did wane a little bit once we got into the more exposition heavy parts of the story.  The students began to get frustrated that quite often, nothing of substance would happen in the story for some lessons.
Fortunately they never gave up on it completely, however.  They understood that if they stuck out the boring parts, a climatic slapstick or action scene would be coming again sooner or later.
If the class hadn't come to an end, I would have continued on with the story indefinitely.

Linguistically, much of the idiomatic and colloquial language was over their heads.  But they were usually able to pick out enough to follow the plot of the story.  As much as possible I let the visuals of the comic carry the story.  Every once and a while the students would have a question about some of the language, and we got into some interesting discussions about some of the phrases the characters were using.  But for the most part, language wasn't a big problem.  (These students were roughly A2 on the Common European Framework).

Other notes:
So, wouldn't you know it, just as I'm finishing up writing this post, I see that just yesterday Netflix announced they're making a series based on Bone.   (How's that for timing?):
Netflix is turning the classic comic book 'Bone' into a series
(Wait a minute: "Classic" comic book?  This thing didn't even finish up its initial run until I was in my 20s.  Is it a classic already? Am I getting that old?)

Footnotes: docs, pub
* My source for the comics is here: https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Bone-1991  I didn't have any problems with it, but I'm not entirely sure its safe.  Use at your own risk
**In the very next sentence, Whisky goes on to caution that: "The final three [volumes], however, settle into an apocalyptic rut—entertaining enough, but no real surprises."  I'll have to take his word for it at this point since I never made it to the end.
*** It sounds like from Wikipedia that some of this fat may have gotten trimmed down for the collected editions, but I was using the original comic books as my source.  (Although as I type this, it occurs to me that perhaps I should have edited them down a bit myself.  But for better or worse, I kept them mostly**** unedited.)
****I say mostly unedited, because there were a couple scenes of Fone Bone leering at one of the female characters: once when she was disrobing, and again later once when she was bathing.  I don't normally like editing stuff out, but this was obviously inappropriate for the classroom.  And what's more, I realized it could be seamlessly cut out without losing anything of substance to the story.  So I just omitted those panels.

Addendum: Rose by Jeff Smith

While my class was still working its way through Bone, I found out via Wikipedia that there was a prequel series to Bone called Rose.

I debated with myself for some time whether the knowledge of the backstory to Bone would enrich the story, or take away from it.
But at a certain point in the story, the Bone narrative itself got bogged down in a lot of exposition and backstory.  And at that point I thought maybe it might help to liven things up a little bit by slowly introducing the prequel series.
I got two lessons out of Rose, before I decided it was one of my less inspired ideas.  Keeping track of all the characters in Bone was confusing enough for my students, without also trying to do the prequel story simultaneously.  So we dropped it.

Materials used for class: Google Drive Folder HERE, Short versions HERE, Part 1: slides, pub, Part 2: slides, pub, Part 3: slides, pub, Part 4: slides, pub, Part 5: slides, pub, Part 6: slides, pub, Part 7: slides, pub, Part 8: slides, pub, 

Link of the Day
Nathan J. Robinson interviews Noam Chomsky

Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume by Jeff Smith: Review