Friday, March 29, 2024
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Telling Fone Bone's epic story
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Jeff Smith began drawing Fone Bone when he was in kindergarten. He thinks he got the name from reading Mad Magazine with his dad. Now he has dedicated almost 12 years of his life to creating a 1,300-page story about Fone Bone and his friends. (Image courtesy Scholastic)

St. Paul, Minn. — When Jeff Smith was in kindergarten, he started drawing a character he called Fone Bone. Smith describes it as a bit like Snoopy without the ears and the black nose.

What started as a doodle, stayed with him. Smith kept on drawing Bone, and a host of his relatives. In high school he fell in love with Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, and decided to tell a similar epic tale, built around Fone Bone.

Almost 30 years later he's finished. Originally he self-published the story in black and white comic books which he sold at comic book shows. Now Scholastic is using the Bone story to launch its new line of color graphic novels. The first of 9 installments just hit the bookstores.

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