COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Bone 8 Modern
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Grade:
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9.8
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Page Quality:
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WHITE
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Certification #:
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1341164006
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Owner:
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DocGo
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
Label Notes
Jeff Smith story, cover, and art
*1st appearance of the Mystery Cow
Synopsis
Thorn's strange flashbacks begin and the Mystery Cow makes its first appearance. The cover is easily in my top 5 and is probably my favorite.
The Slab
Highest grade! This was graded by CGC on June 19, 2017 and remains safe in its plastic shell. The colors look fantastic! Bought off of eBay.
Inside The Comic
Twenty two pages of story and two full pages of letters. The inside front cover has Fone Bone and Phoney angrily pointing fingers at each other from page 6 along with the brief prologue and credits: By Jeff Smith at the top and Cover Airbrush by David Reed on the bottom. The back cover has a panel from page 21 with Fone telling Thorn that they should wake Gran’ma up to show her the map.
Bone-a-Fides
Don Thompson’s review of Bone is mentioned yet again in the Bone-a-Fides and Jeff says the amount of letters that came in because of it were “unbelievable!” He even went so far as to thank a critic for his efforts ;-) Several fans referenced the preview in Cerebus #161 as well, which led Jeff to publicly thank Dave Sim too.
There were a couple of industry letters: one from British comic writer James Robinson and another from Canadian Greg Hyland in a hilarious note of love and hate—love for the comic but hate for his jealousy of Jeff.
Ads
At the moment, I don’t have a raw copy of the first print so I’m not sure what was on the original inside back cover (I sent my last one to be signed for Signature Series back in 2022; hit 9.6). In the third printing, it has the ad for the signed Spirit of Adventure print. There’s also information about ordering a subscription and/or back issues with a note that the issues of Bone will be the current printing.
Estimated Copies Sold: ????
Back Cover Collectible
Bone #1 CGC 9.4, Don & Maggie Thompson pedigree
As you heard me discuss in Bone #7 as well as above, the Don Thompson review in the Comic Buyer’s Guide was seminal in spreading the word about Bone in the comic world. It’s the first of the “Holy Trinity” of previews that laid the groundwork for Bone’s success (Cerebus #161 and Disney Adventures magazine are the others). Jeff even placed Don in the second TPB’s acknowledgements after his tragic death in 1994 (The Complete Bone Adventures Vol. 2).
What you see here was Don Thompson’s personal copy that Jeff signed on the front cover. He also included a sketch of Fone Bone in the interior and a personalization “To Don, Best wishes - Jeff”. I’ve been trying to get a hold of Maggie to ask how this copy was obtained but no luck so far. I’ll guess that Jeff sent this to Don hoping for a review.
If you don’t know about comic book pedigrees here’s a quick rundown: original owner collections that can number in the hundreds or thousands which, at a minimum, contain Golden Age examples with an average grade of 9.2 or Silver Age books at 9.4. There are currently 61 pedigrees that are recognized by CGC and this one was established & sold in 2013 on Heritage (where I made the purchase). The collection contained copies of Avengers #1 (9.4), Tales of Suspense #39 (9.4, first Iron Man), Journey Into Mystery #83 (9.2, first Thor), and Hulk #1 (8.5).
Some of these pedigrees also include books from the Bronze and Modern Age. Don & Maggie had been collectors for decades which inspired their early ‘70s columns in The Comic Buyer’s Guide until they were hired as editors in 1983 (finished in 2013). According to CGC, they “carefully stored away copies of most Marvel & DC books throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s” which apparently continued into the early ‘90s with more select books.
This example may be the only pedigree copy that has ever been personalized to the original owner (please let me know if you’ve seen another). It truly is a unique part of Bone’s history and I’m happy to finally put it up for display.
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