I will let you know after I get the all in one volume. I liked the two collections I read, years and years ago!

I was amazed at how much there was to it. I had figured that it would be a fairly straightforward tale. I was delightfully wrong. TOM it’s on amazon at the moment. Not expensive at all and the edition I got seemed pretty hardy.

not only is it on amazon, it’s on my amazon wish list. also, xmastime bitches.

Not a chance!

It’s absolutely classic for the first part. As it gets more and more ‘serious’ it gets duller and duller. The ending is one of the most staggering Tolkien ripoffs I’ve ever seen.

This is partly due to reading it in the floppies, though—he took a looooong break around the start of the Ghost Circles stuff, to go to Hollywood and fail to get a film version off the ground, and when he came back I had a moment of clarity—“I don’t remember what happened before, and I don’t really care!”

I love Bone, but for some reason never finished it.

Stupid, stupid rat creatures.

whoah, all in one? want.

I read it all in one. Yeah, the first half is probably a lot better than the second, but it all goes by so quickly that you don’t really notice.

It does dip a little but I think because I was reading it all at once (okay over 3 days) it didn’t really matter!

I didn’t know that about the break. It explains one or two things...

(xxxpost) Trish, I was going to say that in original post! YAY!

Read this book for years, but dropped off somewhere along the way.

oh man, bone! i think i have all the original issues from like #5–25 or something. id like to read that complete edition—i didnt even know it had ended.

Bone saved my life!

Sorry, that should read:

OMG, BONE TOTALLY LIKE SAVED MY LIFE OMG!1!!!~*!* ~*tear*~

I started reading this earlier this year, but put it aside with most of the other book’s I’ve started lately. Now I’m afraid to finish! But what I’ve read, I’ve enjoyed.

Should I read it in color or b&w? I read the first volume in black and white and almost picked up several other volumes for dirt cheap but a fried was like “no you need to get the COLOR ones.” Which seemed stupid since it was originally b&w but now I’m unsure.

Why should it be in colour? It is beautiful in black and white.

I prefer the b&w too, but I’ve seen some colored panels and they are tastefully done.

I’m sure they’re lovely, but not so lovely that Walter should let his friend talk him out of cheap black and white editions.

whoa—never seen the color ones!

I agree that it gets worse as it progresses. In the beginning it has an unique blend of Barks and Tolkien, but as the fantasy stuff grows in proportion so does the clichedness. It still has some nice moments throughout, and I guess it doesn’t feel that bad if you just read it at one setting instead of first falling in love with it and then getting constantly disappointed by the new issues.

And Andrew is correct that at one point it seems like Smith just stops caring what has happened before—new plot elements are introduced every issue and the whole thing starts to feel less and less coherent. The most concrete example of this is when Roque Ja bites off the tongue of Kingdok so he can’t talk anymore, yet some issues later he’s talking again without any explanation.

I recently read Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails, a prequel to the main story, and it was great. It captures a lot of the original charm of the comic, which is kinda ironic, since it was drawn by Smith but not written by him.

I read some other prequel that was written by him but not drawn by him, that was pretty okay, I think.

Oh no, fake Tuomas strikes again! Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails was AWFUL. The guy who wrote it seems to be believe that writing = including horrible, unceasing dialogue in every single panel.

B&W pwns color. I am glad you can get these in elementary school via Scholastic book order forms. My brother is now obsessed with them.

Bone is technically very accomplished and often pretty funny, but it’s all a little twee for my tastes.

I got this a few weeks ago and set it aside for when I’d have time...which starts tonight! (Unless I watch 21 Up or Veronica Mars DVDs instead.)

Oh no, fake Tuomas strikes again! Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails was AWFUL. The guy who wrote it seems to be believe that writing = including horrible, unceasing dialogue in every single panel.

Just because we have different standards of what’s funny doesn’t warrant calling me fake. But I do think S,SRT was closer to the spirit of those early Bone comics than what became of the series later on.

eddie van halen has half his tongue cut off and he still talks.

Yeah, but in the comic the point is specifically made that Kingdok can’t talk because he has no tongue, but later on he has mysteriously regained his speech again.

I think one of the biggest incoherencies was the relationship between The Hooded One and Foney Bone. In the beginning of the series it was often implied Foney has some mysterious part in the whole story since The Hooded One is so actively searching for him, but in the end the explanation for the whole thing is a totally silly one, and it sounds like Smith just had to come up with something on the fly. If you’re gonna do a big, epic story, at least plot if beforehand so you don’t run into dead ends.

Tuomas! You’re supposed to flag possible spoilers!

Seriously Tuomas, flag spoilers in future out of consideration please. He also meant that you are fake due to “new” email address (of what, six months at this point?).

I think he had plotted for the relationship from the start. Think about why they are leaving in the first place.

Trish, nothing major has been given away! I now need to find S,SRT for someone else, not me, for christmas. Okay, it’s for me.

Joe, it is quite twee. I liked it for all of that anyway!

B&W is great! I didn’t know it came in colour. I wouldn’t want to see it like that to be honest. It’s like Achewood now do strips in colour for sale, why? I like the black and white, colour is superfluous in this case!

I called 2omas a fake because he must be personally trolling me by saying that Stupid Stupid Rat Tails is anything but a steaming pile of piles. “Closer to the spirit of whatever” means nothing if the writer hacks out braying nonsense for 40+ pages.

Also, expecting a comic — even an epic fantasy tale — to sustain logic over the course of, I don’t know, 10(?) years, is too much because comics are for kids.

Not that I prefer the color version, but like I said before, it’s quite subtle, and not distracting at all.