This page last updated ... 06/04/98
When Jeff Smith created Bone as
a kindergartner in Columbus, Ohio, little did he know
that he'd share the stage with Garry Trudeau at the
National Cartoonist Society's awards this spring. Winning
the award for Best Comic Book, Smith is etching his way
into pop history.
By creating Bone, Smith is indulging himself with an
adventure that he always wanted to read as a child.
Inspired by Peanuts, Uncle Scrooge, and Walt Kelly's
Pogo, Smith says, "I always wished that my childhood
heros would go out on an adventure that had actual danger
in it...Or an adventure that would have consequences that
might actually alter their existence."
"Bone is about growing up and leaving home for the
first time," says Smith. "The story is about
what happens when the Bone cousins leave Boneville...this
sheltered little world they grew up in and then go out
into this wilder, outside world." And just as Fone
Bone takes off on his adventure, Smith looks forward to
sharing the Bone series with a national audience.
Fone Bone and friends were first published in the Ohio
State University's student newspaper, The Lantern, in a
comic-strip format. Smith, then a student, drew the
attention of national syndicates interested in publishing
Bone. Smith opted to start an animation company, and
later broke away to publish Bone in 1991.
Jeff founded Cartoon
Books in 1991 to publish his bi-monthly comic book. In
July of 1993, Jeff's wife Vijaya Iyer joined the company
as full partner and president to assume the
responsibilities of publishing. Bone has won many awards,
including an Eisner for Best Humor Publication three
years in a row.
Today, Bone is flourishing as one of the top 50 comic
books in the United States. Bone has won numerous awards
and is published in nine different languages with an
enormous international following.
See also Jeff Smith's Awards
From:
indy Magazine #13 - Blackmore Publishing - February,
1996.
October 1995 marked the first issue of Jeff Smith's
wildly successful Bone series that was not self-published
by Smith's own Cartoon Books. Smith's move to Image
Comics raises a number of questions about the state of
the comic book industry,especially in terms of
self-publishing.
indy magazine: Why did you go to Image?
Jeff Smith: Basically, I looked around the industry
and saw the big players gobbling each other up -- not
unlike the real worldwhere conglomerates are always
consolidating -- and as far as I could tell, the people
who were writing the future of our
industry were doing it without the small publisher in
mind. No, one of the reasons I got into self-publishing,
as opposed to thereason I got into comics, was to have
control. I was losing control with the way that the
distribution system was turning. In
order to maintain some of that control, I joined forces
with the Image guys. They were more than happy to extend
to me theprotection that the Image "i" would
get in the distributors catalogs, while still giving me
all of the control I wanted.
indy: Is that because with Cartoon Books,
your self-publishing company, you only had a tiny
industry market share, thereforeyou had to play by the
distributors' rules?
Smith: Sure, that is why I felt as if I had no
control, because Bone, which even though it sold as well
as it did, it was just onetitle. One title does not make
a significant market share at any given time. Whereas
Marvel, or any company that puts out
multiple titles at any given moment, they are going to
have a more significant market share.
indy: So even if your one title is outselling
the majority of another company's titles, you are still
considered insignificant compared to them.
Smith: Yeah, that is pretty much how it works.
Bone is too small to think about when you have a crisis
with your bread and butter books, and yet it's big enough
to notice when it comes time to cut costs. I think I
should make it clear here, that Bone isno longer a book
that I do by myself up in my loft. I still write it and
draw it, but my wife Vijaya handles a lot of the
publishingduties like invoicing, licensing, foreign
language editions; we have a staff, office space,
storage, equipment, overhead -- all theexpenses it takes
to run a publishing company. If our sales dropped, it
wouldn't just be a drag, it could put us out of
business!Image's market share offers a bit of a buffer
from some of the craziness.
indy: So your only other option to get market
share other than to join another company would be to
start putting out a lot of different titles.
Smith: [Laughs] Yeah, I could do the swimsuit
issues and make every millionth one a solid gold cover.
indy: Did you see it coming that you were not
going to be able to get what you needed from the
distributors?
Smith: I think it was already starting to
happen.
indy: So how did joining Image happen? Was
Larry Marder a big part of it?
Smith: Larry was a huge part of it. As soon as
the announcement was made that Marvel was buying Heroes
World, I was pretty much cut off from the information
circuit at the distribution and publishing level. I had
no real information coming to me,and I could not really
find out what was going on. Had it not been for Larry, I
do not think I would have really known what was going on.
He was my only source really high up there. Of course,
previously I had felt pretty comfortable talking with
anybody at any of the companies; distributors or
publishers. Suddenly it got a little frosty outside
[laugh]. Second, I know Larry because of Beanworld. We're
good friends. He is the one who made me see Image as not
just a smaller Marvel, but as prettymuch a co-op of
really successful, huge self-publishers [laugh]. It was
important to me, philosophically, that Image was a
creator-owned and creator-controlled company, as opposed
to a company like DC, for example. DC publishes Sandman,
which I think is a really good book, and Batman is one of
my favorite characters, but they are very corporate
controlled, andthe creators have little or no say. Except
for in the case of Sandman in which they are giving Neil
some say for a couple moreissues [laughs].
indy: Before your deal with Image for them to
publish your book in the United States, you have done
this in Germany and France as well?
Smith: I think Bone is in nine languages now.
We are doing very well in Germany. Vijaya does a lot of
the dealing with the foreign companies. She sorts through
the offers that come in and figures out which companies
are valid, and does the contractual work and that kind of
stuff.
indy: So how does your current deal with
Image differ from what you are doing in foreign
companies?
Smith: In the other countries, we are
licensing the Bone stories I have already done to other
publishers. It is more like the normal book market in the
United States. In Germany it is Carlsen-Verlag, for
example. We just license the properties to them over
there.
indy: Do you have a say in how the books are
translated?
Smith: Sort of. They send them to me for my
approval, but I cant read German, so... [laughs]
Germany was the first translation we did. Vijaya now
takes the translations and sends them to another person.
There is a service that we work with that will read the
translations and tell us if they think that it has been
done pretty well. Almost one hundred percent of the time
they say that these translations are some of the best
they have ever seen. Occasionally, they will have some
nit-pick thing like the German translation may be too
formal in one instance. Something that you would not
really think of. Now the difference between those deals
and the one with Image is that we are actually still
producing books. We are not licensing the Bone characters
to Image at all.
indy: What was it like to be part of the
giant Image display area at the San Diego Comic-Con last
year?
Smith: That was actually kind of fun. We did
not actually have an official "i" logo on our
booth, but we were in the Image area, so we tacked up an
Image t-shirt so that there would be an "i" up
there. There were some people who came by who had never
heard of Bone, but they saw the Image "i" so
they took a look. And of course once they got a good look
at the book, they really could not fathom how we got into
the Image section [laughs]. I think they started calling
for Security [laughs]. I would have to say that it was a
lot of fun. You can't deny that the Image guys have
brought a lot of excitement into the industry, and a lot
of that excitement takes place at conventions. We got to
be a little part of that. I liked it. The reaction to our
move was overwhelmingly positive.
indy: Speaking of San Diego. You received
three more Eisner awards at the convention this year. Did
you expect it?
Smith: I did not expect it. I figured that
there is a lot of timing involved for these things. I
remember that Bone was getting a lot of good word of
mouth right about the time that ballots were being mailed
out in 1994. Taking home so many awards in 1994 was
really overwhelming, but I figured that this is it, that
everybody went "Oh my god, well if I had known he
was going to win all of these awards, I never would have
voted for him!" But, no, to get three of them again,
and especially the ones that I got, it was pretty
overwhelming.
indy: "Best Humor Publication,"
"Best Writer/Artist, Humor," and what was the
third?
Smith: "Best Continuing Comic Book."
That's a pretty big one right there. I was quite
surprised.
indy: Does this mean that you are not just
the flavor of the month, that you are the real deal?
Smith: Well, it is comforting to me in that
respect, yes, a little bit. I do not think it necessarily
means all that much in the long haul, we will have to
wait and see about that. But, yeah, it is a little
comforting.
indy: Speaking of the long haul, you just
came out with issue #21. How do you see the story
progressing now, as compared to a year or two ago?
Smith: I am into the second section of the
story. I remember I was talking with Gary Groth, when I
did an interview with The Comics Journal. We were talking
about some gripes someone had about my book. I was saying
then that I hadn't gotten very far into the story, that
there was more to the story than the humor part. And of
course everyone who had read Bone knew that there was
this underlying darker part, this fairytale type side.
Now we are into it. Bone #21 is the scariest one to date.
It isn't fun.
indy: Do you think that Bone is still
suitable for readers of all ages?
Smith: Yeah, I do. I think that fairytales are
very scary. I donot show a lot of blood and gore. I think
that scary stuff is good for kids, and I think that kids
enjoy it.
indy: What percentage of each book is
completely planned out ahead of time and what percentage
is made up on the fly?
Smith: I would imagine that within an issue
about twenty percent comes out while I am actually
physically making the book. For example, in Bone #21, for
a long time I have known that this was going to be a
confrontation between Gran'ma Ben and the rat creatures.
I also knew that Kingdok was going to come up and meet
them. While I was writing the story I had it planned a
certain way. The whole time Gran'ma Ben was holding her
sword during her confrontation with Kingdok. I always
thought that he was just going to decide to fade away
into the woods, to step backwards, almost like a Cheshire
cat. As he got farther back, you would just see his eyes
and his grin, and he was just taunting her, as if her
time would come. Kind of to leave it on pins and needles
there. She could have been killed, but it was just his
whim that she was not. Well, then when I was actually
drawing this story, for some reason, I had Gran'ma Ben
hand off the sword to Thorn. All of the sudden, while
Kingdok was trying to kill Gran'ma Ben, Thorn comes out
of nowhere and cuts his arm off! Man, I did not plan
that! That was not in any of the outlines. It was never
in any of the plans. It was never in my head to have
Kingdok lose an arm. His arm comes off, and he has a
hallucination. All of that was completely on the fly. It
was when I was actually drawing the panels that it all
just came out.
indy: What do you think of the idea of
self-publishing as a community?
Smith: I like the idea of solidarity. Nothing
happens in a vacuum. When I was starting out I got a lot
of help from guys like Jim Valentino, Larry, and Dave
Sim. I try to repay the stuff I really, really like. And
I think that as long as we all get together at shows and
share tips and talk about the pitfalls, the community
will flourish. I don't buy into the "us"
against "them" philosophy. Like it's a war of
the self-publishers against the rest of the comic books.
I am a little troubled when I look around and see the
clique-ishness that the movement has taken; where the
emphasis is more on the technicality of self-publishing,
rather than on the artists who have decided to
self-publish. The importance of self-publishing is that
it remains one of the strongest tools an artist has to
bring his or her own creation to market without corporate
interference. But again, to my mind, the emphasis should
be on the work. The real revolution is to try and get the
marketplace to accept different kinds of comics; and on
that front we are making real progress. Think back just
two or three years -- can you imagine books like Bone, or
Stray Bullets, or Strangers in Paradise getting the kind
of attention they do now?
email address: jrm@grove.ufl.edu
