COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Bone 17 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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4266004018
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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
Synopsis
Gran'ma Ben reveals hers and Thorn's true identity as the royal family of Atheia. The rat creatures pass along this development to The Hooded One who, it seems, was already in the know.
The Slab
Highest graded! Traded for this from the famous anonymous collector and was officially graded on June 27, 2023. Will definitely be going to a Jeff Smith signing sometime in the near future!
Inside The Comic
Twenty pages of story, three pages of letters and one page for an ad. The inside front cover has a drawing of Fone clutching his backpack from page 3. The brief prologue is included as well as the credits: By Jeff Smith at the top and Cover Airbrush by David Reed on the bottom. The back cover itself has a panel from page 4 showing Gran’ma Ben reading a love poem to Thorn while Fone Bone stands aghast.
Bone-a-Fides
The Bone-a-Fides section is mostly fans but also a couple industry letters from The Comics Journal (thanking Jeff for a recent interview) and Dark Horse Editor-in-Chief Diana Schutz who had previously written in Bone #9. A fan who critiqued #16 was pissed that the story was so short. He said that he put on a Pearl Jam CD to listen to while he read thru #16 (“Vs.” from 1993), and “By the time the first song, Go, was over, so was the book.” Jeff said that there was the same amount of pages/panels as the last few issues but the action was faster paced. It still took him almost two months to complete and he hoped the reader would feel that it all evened out in the end.
There’s a heartfelt message from a fan in Orlando whose wife had recently suffered a third miscarriage. They found joy and relief in both reading Bone and collecting the first card series. Jeff was unsure if he should print the letter since it was so personal but the couple gladly gave their blessing in the hopes that it would inspire others to talk about such tragedies. Another letter described how a mother in her late 50s was motivated to give Bone a read after witnessing her son and daughter-in-law fighting over an issue that had just arrived in the mail. She loved it of course and Jeff revealed that the moment in Bone #13 where Gran’ma Ben twirled the chicken above her head before a horrified Fone & Phoney was inspired by this very lady (her son is a good friend of Jeff). The final letter was from a fan in Australia who luckily found one of the hundred sketch cards from a Bone Series 1 pack. He opened it at his local comic shop which nearly persuaded he and his wife to name his upcoming baby Thorn (Jeff revealed that the baby had since been delivered safely and was named Molly Grace).
Ads
The ad on the last page is a call for nominations for the 1995 Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award. This was for people to nominate their favorite local comic shop, of which, Jeff was a big supporter. Packrat Comics, a store in the suburbs of Columbus, OH (which still stands today), eventually won the trophy at the 1995 San Diego Comic Con. The inside back cover has an ad for Larry Marder’s Beanworld: Book One TPB.
Estimated Copies Sold: ????
Back Cover Collectible
Bone #17 CGC 9.6 SS
I have attempted to get a #17 signed but it was graded as a NM+…and rightfully so. I sent it to Rich Henn to facilitate a signature at the 2022 San Diego Comic-Con. Every #17 I’ve ever had has had some kind of imperfection that keeps it from NM/MT. On this one, I was probably too excited about the book’s overall structure and ended up missing the small crinkling on the bottom left corner of the back cover. Exhibit #1,000,000 that I am far from perfect ;-)
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