Why You Should Be Excited Netflix Is Turning Jeff Smith’s Bone into an Animated Series

The covers all prominently feature the book’s lead character, Fone Bone, a cartoony marshmallow blob who couldn’t possibly be the star of a story for grown-ups, could he? No matter how accomplished a work, I reasoned, there was little to be gained from reading something so clearly not for me (which is fine! Not every story is for all audiences, nor should they be). And so, without necessarily disbelieving any of the enthusiastic recommendations I’d encountered, I wrote it off as purely kid stuff.

The first volume, Out from Boneville, finds the three Bone cousins—well-meaning Fone Bone, greedy Phoncible P. (Phoney) Bone, and charming, self-centered Smiley Bone—run out of their hometown in the wake of one of Phoney’s schemes. Lost and eventually separated in a vast desert, they each make their way to a forested valley and ultimately to a farm belonging to a young woman named Thorn and her Gran’ma Ben. The opening pages are darkly comic, with the broad personalities of the Bone cousins dominating the story and the deceptively simple art—the Bones themselves are are marshmallowy blobs, and the desert backgrounds, when they feature at all, are relatively plain.

Throughout the series, Smith makes it his mission to turn familiar tropes on their heads. Fone’s attempts to impress Thorn are immediately and frequently undercut by his size and comparative weakness. Though inspired by the bravado of the heroes he adores in his favorite comic books and the novel Moby Dick, he’s unable even to lift an axe to chop wood. Gran’ma Ben is all sweetness and light until Phoney insults her prize-winning racing cows; with the angelic smile never leaving her face, she proceeds to roll up her sleeves while one hand forms a fist. (Mercifully, Smith cuts away so we’re not forced to witness Phoney getting his well-deserved comeuppance.) Perfectly calibrated comedic moments like these point to the biggest strengths of Bone: Gran’ma Ben is a far more significant character than we initially realize, and her introduction makes clear that there’s much more to her than appearances would suggest. Discovering true that is—both for her and for the entire roster of surprisingly complex characters—is one of the series’ great joys.

What’s doubly fascinating and fun is the way that Bone seems to exist in multiple worlds all at once, and without ever feeling at odds with itself. The cheeky, slightly silly all-ages humor sits comfortably next to the epic hero’s quest narrative, and both feel quite natural within the richly built setting of an increasingly dangerous world. There are hints of all of this in Smith’s avowed inspirations, from Walt Kelley’s Pogo to Carl Banks’ Scrooge McDuck, but neither push the form quite as far as Bone. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and Bill Willingham’s Fables approach it in scale, but neither is remotely as funny, and neither aims for a genuinely all-ages approach (though Smith’s epic’s occasional intensity has landed it on the American Library Association’s lists of challenged books more than once).

If you’d like to check out Bone before the Netflix series premieres, you have a few options, but whatever you do, you’ll want to start at the beginning. The first of the nine-volume series is Out from Boneville, available in full color. The series evolves over the course of its run, but the first book will give you a pretty good feel for the story. Though suitable for any age, this is probably the best way for younger readers to experience the story—the individual chapters are of a manageable size.

The series is complete in and of itself, but there are some extras to check out once you’ve finished. The prequel Rose dives into the backstory of one of Bone‘s main characters, but is packed with spoilers for those who haven’t read the series. Tall Tales features a few bonus adventures starring the Bone cousins, and there’s also a trilogy of illustrated novels written by Tom Sniegoski and involving a new generation of Bones in the Valley.