Book Review: The Art of Bone

The Art of Bone

The art book for Bone is as entertaining as the comics itself. After reading this, or the comics, it's easy to understand why fans love it so much. There's good humour, adventure and storytelling.

This is a huge 200-page hardcover collecting the artworks that went behind creating Bone. You can even see comics strips - the origin of Bone - drawn by Jeff Smith when he was 9 years old. There are also sketches, rough layouts, inking boards with all the corrections pasted over corrections, photo reference used for the backgrounds, selected black and white as well as coloured panels and covers. All are captioned and most come with a short commentary.

Although it's just snippets from the whole story, the sense of fun and adventure is never lacking. I found myself captivated, reading from cover to cover in one sitting. I love the style which in a way is similar to newspaper cartoons, but used for a bigger story. The reproduction of the art is great. The panels and colour art are beautiful, and recently added colour really adds to what's already a great comic.

The only downside, if any, is biography which is pretty short.

It's a wonderful book for the fans.

The Art of Bone - 01

The Art of Bone - 02

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The Art of Bone - 12

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Here are direct links to the book:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de | Amazon.co.jp

Comments

Sigh... There's nothing like the comic. Untill now, it seems.
This looks like a must have. Thanks for making me aware it's out there. :D

/Jon

Great to see this featured on your site :) I think Jeff Smith is amazing.

You might be interested to read my old and detailed review of this book here:

https://www.brandonklassen.com/media/2007-08-01-Art-Of-Bone.html

I thought you or your readers might also be interested to read my interviews with Jeff and Bone colorist Steve Hamaker:

https://www.brandonklassen.com/media/2007-02-01-Jeff-Smith.html

https://www.brandonklassen.com/media/2007-03-01-Steve-Hamaker.html

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