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Bone follows the three Bone cousins as they are kicked out of Boneville and quickly lost in a wasteland before discovering the valley where the rest of the story takes place. Smith lays some of the ground work for the epic story to follow but the first three volumes are heavily influenced by cartoon strips like Walt Kelly's Pogo and old Looney Tunes type cartoons. There is lots of slapstick and jokes. The last two-thirds shift towards epic fantasy adventure along the lines of The Hobbit.

I absolutely love Smith's simple art style for the Bones. It's very expressive while cartoony while the humans are drawn more realistically. I quite like the juxtaposition of these cartoons interacting with humans. I can't express how much I enjoy this comic. Smith just hits every note both in story and in art.

Bone was originally self-published from 1991-2004 (when I first read it). It was one of the first comics to put out trades of all the issues, keeping the entire story in print for those that came upon the story after its start. It was instrumental in changing the industry as you didn't have to search through back issue bins and pay exorbitant prices to complete the story. Then Jeff Smith changed the game again in the mid 2000's when he entered an agreement with Scholastic to republish the trades in color as Scholastic's first book in its new graphic novel imprint. The trades had sold thousands through comic book shops, but Scholastic's reach was in the millions now that you could find it in book stores and libraries.

This was my first time reading the colorized version of Bone. I've read through my black and white single issues a couple of times in the past. I always thought of the colorized version as the Ted Turner version of old movies, something that would look unnatural and forced. I was completely wrong. The colors are natural and subtle. You can't even tell they were originally black and white unless you put them side by side. The two versions are different experiences and I can't say one is better than the other. Over time, I suggest reading them both, because Bone is always worth a re-read.