COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Bone 45
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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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0216070009
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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
The Hooded One attempts to take Thorn from the rooftops and fails. However, she learns that Thorn is now aware of the Crown of Horns but has yet to understand its true power.
The Slab
The single highest graded Signature Series copy! My raw book sent to the 2014 Emerald City Comic-Con to be signed by Jeff. Thanks to dscott for facilitating! Graded by CGC on May 10, 2014.
Inside The Comic
Twenty pages of story, two pages of letters, and two pages of ads. The inside front cover has a drawing of Fone Bone holding a prayer stone from page 4 with the black & white “coloring” reversed. The brief prologue is on the top left and the credits are as follows: Written and Drawn by Jeff Smith, Cover Color by Steve Hamaker. For Cartoon Books: Vijaya Iyer as Publisher, Kathleen Glosan as Production Manager, Steve Hamaker as Product Designer and Kevin Spain for Shipping and Archiving. The back cover has a panel from page 19 with Phoney telling Fone Bone that he wants to discover what the locals use for currency.
Bone-a-Fides
Jeff opened the Bone-a-Fides with a rundown of his recent travels with Vijaya including the Muenchen Fest in Germany, the Raptus Fest in Norway, and finally The Ohio State University’s Festival of Cartoon Art in Columbus. While flying from Munich into Bergen on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, “the world changed. Suddenly, every where I look, friends and loved ones glow with renewed importance.” I think this was true for just about everyone.
All the letters praised Bone #44 as well as the continuing Rose miniseries that was about to wrap up. Jeff said that many loved the crazy new hats adorned by the Bone cousins as well. The first letter lauded the coloring of #1 in the 10th Anniversary Edition and hopes Jeff would reprint each previous issue in color (similar to how he reprinted #1-20 under the Image banner). As we all know, the coloring for the rest of the series didn’t occur until much later in 2005 and they were released by collected chapters and not by issue (Out From Boneville, The Great Cow Race, etc.).
Another fan asks about the Bone timeline in regard to the Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails miniseries and how many years its story unfolded before the Bone cousins first stumbled into the Valley. Jeff said that the tales of Big Johnson Bone happened about 200 years before the events of Rose which “is just long enough to disconnect anyone living at the time from the events now occurring”. The lone exception was the dragon named Stillman, of course, but what he was up to, not even Jeff could say.
A Swedish letter asks how much longer the Bone saga would continue and if he has the whole plot figured out or was making it up as he went along. Jeff has answered similar questions in the past but this time he said that he had written the final THREE issues before he “ever drew a single line of Bone #1”. The final letter describes how a fan discovered Bone in the Disney Adventures magazine while in elementary school but lost track when his comic store in Columbus, OH closed down during the 90s comic collapse. However, about 7 years later when he was about to enter college, he found the legendary Laughing Ogre comic shop which had an entire display of all the Bone chapters he had missed. They even had both prequel miniseries that he described as “The Phantom Menace, only cooler”. The Laughing Ogre is still the local pickup spot for Cartoon Books to this very day.
Ads
The first ad is for Rose #3 which would ship in December 2001. It showed all of page 2’s immaculate snow and ice with the exception of the bottom right panel, which displayed the cover and credits. The second ad is for the Alternative Press Expo 2002 occurring in February in San Francisco (with special guest Jeff Smith, of course). The inside back cover has the same colored ad for Phoney’s Big Bone Hunt as the last issue.
Estimated Copies Sold thru Diamond: 16900
Back Cover Collectible
1994 Comic Book Expo Print by Jeff Smith
I’ve never been a print guy but I have three of these for some reason. The Limited Edition version has an indented California stamp on it which is present on some examples but not others. It’s numbered 412/500. The signed and sketched copy is self-explanatory: “To th’ gang at Video Center!”. The third is just signed and not a part of the Limited Edition.
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