Set Description:
I first noticed Bone #1 when perusing the old Top Ten Comics in Wizard Magazine somewhere in the early to mid 90s. Eventually, I made the effort to track down this title at a local comic store around 1994, which happened to have #13 with the great Phoney/Captain Ahab cover. And the rest is history…
Finding this series in high grade is extremely difficult. The first eleven issues were manufactured with a low quality paper (#1-11 are also a few millimeters wider than the rest) and the back covers on nearly the entire series are black which are typically a nightmare for even the most carefully handled comics.
Initially this was just to be a set of the first ten issues and a few of my favorite covers but when I started buying these things raw, the search itself became much more fun than I had anticipated. My current goal is to have #1-8 in blue labels and the rest in yellow…all in 9.8 or better. The single digit issues that went into multiple printings are too hard to find in high grade and I'd rather not have them signed. I'm also open to a few Signature Series books with mini-sketches as well. So far I have a few Teds as well as Fone, Phoney, Smiley, Big Johnson Bone, and Great Red Dragon. Would really like a Thorn at some point.
Board members who have helped me with the set (alphabetical order): Annihilus, dscott, GOTHAMCENTRAL, Grails, Joel Elad, Menace, mschmidt, paperheart, PhiGam (Colin), Rich Henn, and Unknownworlds.
# of 9.8 Universal books to go from #1-8 (as of 3/2023): 1
# of 9.8 Signature Series books to go from the rest of the set (as of 7/2024): 9
***Flip Book taken out of the set. Thanks Matt G!
***13 1/2 Gold Foil Edition deleted. Thanks Gemma!
***IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THE DIAMOND SALES NUMBERS ON SOME OF MY BOOKS: Diamond wasn’t the only distributor of Bone books, especially after their publishing went back to Cartoon Books at #28 so please don’t consider these as a final number on how many copies were sold (and definitely not a print run).
|