Book Review: Thorn by Jeff Smith

Thorn: The Complete Proto-Bone College Strips 1982-1986 and Other Early Drawings by Jeff Smith

Before he launched into the massive story of Fone Bone, a mild-mannered adventurer from Boneville who gets involved in a wide-ranging saga, creator Jeff Smith went to college (Ohio State University) and drew a comic strip called "Thorn" for the campus newspaper (which had a circulation of 50,000). Thorn is the female protagonist in the later Bone narrative and a romantic interest for Fone Bone. The seeds of that epic are found in these strips, along with a lot of other content. Being a college student, he did a lot of experimenting, drifting into political commentary and bizarre narratives (the characters often visit him in the "real" world and even spend one summer working with him at an ice cream factory). Some material is rough, some is heavy-handed, some reads as derivative. But that's a small portion of a larger, more entertaining strip that hasn't full coalesced yet. As a fan of Bone, I found this mostly enjoyable and am glad I read it.

Recommended for Bone fans.