Jeff Smith
Bone: Quest for the Spark by Tom Sniegoski (Illustrations by Jeff Smith)
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 6, 2011 - 00:51
I guess I've reviewed my share of Bone books now. After releasing just about every bit of Bone comics material by the end of last year, Scholastic is now publishing a text novel series written by Tom Sniegoski with illustration from creator Jeff Smith. Sniegoski wrote some of the comics in last year's collection, Bone: Tall Tales so he's not a newcomer to this world. Still it's a leap from collaborating with the creator of a comic on a comic to taking on writing Bone: Quest for the Spark - a text novel (the first in a planned trilogy) based in the Bone universe.
Bone: Tall Tales by Jeff Smith with Tom Sniegoski
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on October 6, 2010 - 07:05
The world of Bone is back for a series of short stories in Bone: Tall Tales by Jeff Smith with Tom Sniegoski. Jeff Smith's creation has been told in the original black and white versions and now the full series is out in color from Scholastic. After the release of a prequel Bone: Rose, Smith has turned to a small sequel of sorts as Tall Tales concerns four stories that Smiley Bone tells to little Ringo, Bingo, Todd and the rat creature Bartleby during a campout.
This is a fun little addition to Boneland focused on the sillier, fun side of Jeff Smith's world with almost none of the serious side of the epic tale through the original series of books. Most of the tall tales center around a new character called Big Johnson Bone, a Paul Bunyan-like character who is constantly telling tall tales as he wrecks a patch of destruction in his adventures. There is also a wordy, somewhat timid monkey named Mr. Pip (who Big Johnson won in a poker game) who is a nice counterpoint to Big Johnson's bravado. Even though the book is set after the epic series, the tall tale about Big Johnson concerns an adventure before the story in the original series. It turns out Big Johnson serves a key role in the early history of the valley when he turns back the rat creatures and rescues the forest creatures.
While there is none of the epic quality to the original series or the prequel Rose, this book does have all of the charming humor. The Queen Rat and her gigantic son Tyson are two great characters who add a bit more to the basic rat monster template of the stories. The tiny dragon Stillman is also very funny - in fact there is a whole lot of "cute" in the stories with lots of baby animals and the type of scattered chatter that Smith has done before.
Sometimes You Just Gotta Rampage!
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 7, 2010 - 10:52
So there was this video playing at the Cartoon Art Museum during my visit last week where a woman was drawing a comic by painting on panels. The gimmick was that she had four panels on the wall where she'd draw the next scenes of the comic and then after finishing she's repaint the same four panels with the next scenes. The story was a cute one about monsters rampaging through the countryside. Anyone know the name? Is it on the web? Thanks to Ben Gamboa for identifying it as Lark Pien's Small Destructions, something she actually created at the Museum in 2007. And here it is:
JUSTIFY THE WORLD's HYPE
Just finished reading the first volume of Scott Pilgrim - I hadn't been avoiding it so much as just never got around to it. Cute story, kind of funny but I was a bit underwhelmed given the love this comic has gotten. Maybe my expectations were too high or does it get better as the series goes on?
JUSTIFY MY FORTHCOMING HYPE
I am working on a review/overview of Evan Dahm's Overside comics: Rice Boy and Order of Tales. There's a reason why comic legend Jeff Smith picked Rice Boy as one of his comics of the decade.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
Cool - Websnark is back. While Wednesday is working on an overhaul of the site, Eric writes about the return of T Campbell's Faans.
Webcomics.com new members-only approach evolves again. The old forums are now available for free to read but only members can start new threads or post replies to existing threads.
TOOLS
Anyone familiar with ComicFury? It's advertised as "a free, easy to use and advertisement-free tool that will help you set up and host a website for your webcomic, which you can elegantly manage without any technical knowledge. All you will have to worry about when using ComicFury is actually making the comics, the rest is provided by us. It also offers you free exposure on the site and excellent support on the forums."
