Bone 35 NM Cartoon Books Jeff Smith Gran’ma Ben 1stpr Netflix Animated TV Series

Description

Bone (1991 1st Printing) #35

Published Mar 1999 by Cartoon Books
1st Printing
Cover art by Jeff Smith
Script and art by Jeff Smith
36 pgs, black & white

Untitled story
Roque Ja and the Hooded One come to an agreement; Gran’ma Ben tells Phoney Bone about his role in the upcoming battle. Something Drastic starring Riblet, script by Tom Sniegoski, art by Stan Sakai. Bone/Akiko illustration by Mark Crilley.

Like new! Includes a copy of Bone Sourcebook!
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Bone characters (Please remind me at time of purchase!)

In October 2019, a Bone project was picked up by Netflix for an animated series after Warner’s turnaround of the project. However, in April 2022, production on the series was canceled during a reorganization of Netflix Animation. As of February 2023, Smith attempts to approach the animation studios to continue working on the animated series.

Netflix To Produce ‘Bone’ Series

Netflix announced this morning that it has secured rights to the independent fantasy comic book series, Bone, with plans to develop an animated kids series.

“I’ve waited a long time for this,” said Bone creator Jeff Smith. “Netflix is the perfect home for Bone. Fans of the books know that the story develops chapter by chapter and book by book. An animated series is exactly the way to do this! The team at Netflix understands Bone and is committed to doing something special.”

Bone, originally serialized in 55 issues from 1991 to 2004, tells the story of the three Bone cousins who end up in a fantastic valley that they must set free from the Lord of the Locusts. Smith, an animator himself who co-founded the Ohio studio Character Builders, was influenced in the creation of Bone by his appreciation of classic cartoonists and comic book artists like Carl Barks, Walt Kelly, and George Herriman.

Dating back to the nineties, various studios have attempted to translate Bone into animation. Nickelodeon was among the earliest companies to become involved, and wanted to create a Bone animated feature. The deal fell apart over a differing creative vision between the studio and creator. Smith recounted in an interview how Nickelodeon tried to change the tone of the film by suggesting the addition of pop songs by Britney Spears and Nsync:

Nickelodeon tried to turn “Bone” into an animated feature in the 1990s, but the deal fell apart when creator Jeff Smith refused to add pop songs by Britney Spears and NSYNC. He explains what happened below:

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DuPont: Any truth that they wanted a Britney Spears-style pop song?

Smith: No, they didn’t want a Britney Spears-style pop song – they wanted a Britney Spears song in the film. And I like Britney Spears; I like pop culture; I like Madonna and Michael Jackson as much as anybody else – but I had a very different kind fo film that I was trying to make.

And in the late nineties, I was really adamant that there would be no songs in the movie – because all animated feature films seem to have these awful formulaic songs. I think that’s a law somewhere – “Animated film for kids? Put some crappy songs in it!”

Like when we pitched Warner Bros. while we were in Annecy. They took us out on a boat and were really wooing us – until I got to the point where I said, “I need it in writing that there will be no songs.” And it was pretty much, “Swim back to shore.” laughs That was it. That was the end.

But Nickelodeon did agree to no songs. In writing. So this pop-song thing was probably the turning point in the whole affair for me; this was about a year-and-a-half in. I mean, we had a great time with Nickelodeon – they were a lot of fun, the actual executives that we worked with. I really liked them. We would go to New York, where Viacom is, or we would go to Paramount, and we always had a wonderful time. But one day after lunch we sat down…and the executive there turned to me and said, “Okay. We can get twelve million dollars right now if we put a pop song in the movie. So, Jeff – do you see somewhere in the body of the film where we could put a Britney Spears or an NSYNC song?”

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Most recently, a trilogy of films was being developed by Mark Osborne for Warner Bros. Smith has previously stated a preference for a hand-drawn version of Bone rather than a cg translation, and with the project being set up as a series at Netflix, that seems like a distinct possibility now. (Update: Smith has confirmed on Twitter that the series will be made in 2d.)

Bone became a mainstream hit after its publication ended, when Scholastic selected it as the launch title for its kids-and-teens graphic novel imprint, Graphix. Since then, the comic has sold over 8 million copies in North America alone, and has now been translated into 30 languages worldwide.

Bone creator Jeff Smith got his ‘dream team’ for Netflix animated series

The inimitable comics series is still on its way

Netflix’s Bone animated series is still in the writing process, according to Jeff Smith, but he can say one thing for certain: The creative team behind it is exactly who he wanted.

Polygon sat down with Smith for a long interview on the 30th anniversary of the first self-published issue of Bone (stay tuned for everything we talked about next week), but the topic of the Bone animated series naturally arose. The Netflix show was announced in October of 2019, but there hasn’t been much news since.

Smith says that preproduction was delayed along with much of the entertainment industry’s productions in 2020, but that, ironically, that delay yielded unexpected benefits.

“There were a couple of people that worked on some shows that I asked about,” Smith recalled, “because I watched a bunch of Cartoon Network shows and some Netflix shows. Is this person around? Can we get this person? What’s this guy doing now? Or what’s she doing? And thanks to the pandemic, I was able to get everybody I wanted.

“I say thanks because there were people that were in contract, but we were delayed by like, eight or nine months because of the pandemic; by that time the contracts were up, and I got everybody I wanted. I don’t want to really say who they are, because I don’t want to steal Netflix’s thunder but, yes. I got my dream team of animation people, and I’m pretty excited about it so far.”

Bone first hit shelves in July 1991, and concluded its genre blending comedy/horror/high fantasy/all-ages adventure epic in 2004. The series exploded into new popularity after it was picked up for reprinting in graphic novel format by Scholastic Books, and a new generation of kids discovered the story of Phone Bone and the lost princess Thorn saving the Valley from the return of the Lord of the Locusts. Stay tuned for Polygon’s full interview with Smith, coming soon.

Near mint, 1st print. Bagged & Boarded.