That mid-August Sunday Jeff Smith had been exercising in the basement of his house. He went up to the kitchen to drink some water... and he doesn't remember anything else. His wife found him unconscious on the floor, among glass. "She heard me drop the glass. Since she didn't hear me swear, she got worried," he jokes about the cardiac arrest he suffered three summers ago. The doctors later told him that, due to the attack, the oxygen supply to his brain had been momentarily interrupted and that, from a clinical point of view, he had been dead for a few moments.
Fortunately, the creator of the fantasy saga Bone and legend of graphic novels fully recovered. The first thing he did when he left the hospital and reopened his studio was to draw a couple of pending covers. Right now, also in August and almost as a revenge for the scare of 2023, Smith (McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, 66 years old) receives the tribute from the industry and the comic guild with the Milton Caniff Award, the recognition for his entire professional career given by the most important cartoonists' association in the world (the American National Cartoonist Society) and which in the comic world is equivalent to an honorary Oscar.
"I still find it hard to believe that the doodles I drew since I was five years old have reached so many people," he admits via video call from his home in Columbus, Ohio, which he alternates with another in Key West, Florida. "When I doodled them as a child, I didn't show them to anyone. They were little stories I made for myself and always came back to. I tried with other characters, but I always came back to them... What can I say? They still accompany me," he says about the protagonists of one of the most popular comic adventures of the last half-century: the Bone cousins, translated into 30 languages. And aimed at young people... but equally enjoyed by adults.
What kind of adventures do some bald, big-nosed, pale-skinned little creatures, archenemies of creatures they call rat creatures, present? "My standard definition is The Lord of the Rings mixed with Bugs Bunny. Imagine Bugs Bunny giving Aragorn a big, wet kiss on the mouth and you'll get the basic idea," the author recounted to this journalist two decades ago at the Madrid Comics convention. "That would be a quick way to explain it, but there's more to it. As with the classic hero's journey, at first it seems simple but then it gets complicated."
Astiberri Ediciones, which then presented the Spanish and color edition of the first volume of Bone, published the successive installments -a total of a dozen- and introduced Spanish readers to other titles by Smith, such as the science fiction series RASL, now unexpectedly releases a new installment: Bone. The Scouts and the Rat Creatures. The album does not expand the medieval-inspired universe beyond known limits, but rather recovers in full color The Lost History of Big Johnson Bone.
"The plot is closed. I no longer have time to expand the saga with sequels or prequels. I have written a couple of short stories around its margins, but only, as I said, because I enjoy drawing the characters," he specifies. The fact is that this Bone and, above all, the Milton Caniff award, named after the legendary creator of Terry and the Pirates (Dolmen Editorial), puts Smith back in the media spotlight, where he hasn't been very active, so to speak.
Although it is known that Smith thoroughly studied the theories of Joseph Campbell to understand the mechanism of myth, the question is pertinent: did he find it difficult to find a balance between humor and epic? "I had no problem mixing The Lord of the Rings with Bugs Bunny, I felt I could do it. What I tried to do was create a story where something unexpected happened: that Bugs Bunny got hurt," he emphasizes. Astiberri promoted it at the beginning of the century as "the incredible saga of an involuntary hero who must save an idyllic valley from the forces of evil."
Bone has been very lucky with readers from half the planet... and very unlucky with the heads of major studios and streaming giants. Smith, through his own label, Cartoon Books, signed with Netflix in 2019 a contract for the adaptation of the saga into an animated series. The pandemic and the restructuring of the department after a historic stock market crash on April 20, 2022 (54 billion dollars lost, 35% of its value) sent the project to the trash. No studio has shown interest in reviving it. "I've lost interest. I wanted it to at least be a movie, but I've resigned myself. Bone has always ended up in the wrong hands," he laments.
What he hasn't quite gotten used to is that his most important work is read in a political or esoteric light. And, consequently, banned. As if in the Great Cow Race or the old man's cave -two scenarios of the adventures of the trio of cousins Fone, Phoney, and Smiley- there was an uncomfortable message hidden.
"Bone has been one of the most censored books in the US. I know, it's ridiculous, right? They see something in it that they don't approve of. Well, they can go to hell," he explodes, who for five years collaborated with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund precisely to advocate for freedom of expression. "In my comics, I don't promote any political ideas. I only value friendship," he rejects. Although he has no problem taking a stand: "I'm optimistic: Trump will be gone soon and we will return to being Americans. It's a disaster."
Smith is now working on another monumental saga, Tuki (without translation into Spanish), which dates back to the human discovery of fire. "I want to make six volumes. I have already published two and I am working on the third. When I finish the ones I have left, I will retire," he announces. And what about generative AI? "It terrifies me. I am repelled by the idea of a computer creating art."