Our official press release: 

Jeff Smith, creator of the indy title BONE, announces the first leg of a year long Bone World Tour to promote the release of the color BONE volumes across Europe and North America. Smith's company Cartoon Books, which licensed the color rights in the US to Scholastic Books in 2005, has now found publishing partners in Greece, Spain, France, U.K, Norway, Italy and French Canada. There will be tour stops in all countries.

The tour begins at Frankfurt Book Fair, which will feature a 40 piece Bone exhibit in the comics pavilion. Then moves to the Babel Festival in Athens, which will host a 30 piece exhibit of all original art. Smith will continue to criss-cross Europe until the first leg of the World Tour will ends Feb. 23 at the New York Comic Convention in time for the release of Scholastic’s newest color edition of Bone, ‘Rockjaw, Master of the Eastern Border’.

Scholastic, under the imprint Graphix, has sold over 1, 000,000 copies of the color Bone edition to date.

The tour so far:

Oct 3-10 – Germany Frankfurt Book Fair and book tour including Berlin, Cologne and Hamburg 40 piece exhibition at Frankfurt Book Fair's Comics Center visit German publisher Tokyopop

Oct 12-15 – Greece Babel Fest in Athens with 30 piece Bone original art exhibition visit Greek publisher Jemma

October 16-21 – Spain Spanish Book Tour including Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao visit Spanish publisher Astiberri

Oct 21-24 – France and Belgium French book tour including Paris and Brussels visit French publisher Editions Delcourt

Oct 25-26 – U.K. English book tour including London visit U.K. publisher Harper Collins

Oct 27-29 – Norway Bok i Sentrum festival in Oslo visit Norwegian publisher Egmont

November 3-5 – Italy Lucca Comics Festival visit Italian publisher Panini

November 18-20 – Canada Montreal Book Fair visit French Canadian publisher Modus Vivendi

February 23-25 (2007) – USA New York Comicon visit the New York Comicon Website

For detailed information about stops in each country, visit Jeff's Studio. Dates are still being added at this time.

The rascals have been inked.  I spent about two hours working with a sable hair brush before handing it over to Steve Hamaker, who scanned the drawing into his computer. Steve then used Photoshop to lay in the colors.  He busted this out in about three hours, but we made our deadline!

We’ll update again when Jacob Covey at Fantagraphics finishes the final package design.  If you would like to follow the previous steps, you can link to the earlier Our Gang 2 blog entries .

It's actually a set for a TV show called “The War at Home,”  a family sit-com that runs Sunday nights on Fox, and in this episode they visit the San Diego Comic-Con International. The show’s producers saw our booth in San Diego and asked if they could use some of our backdrops and books and t-shirts as props.  I recognize the comedian who plays the dad from Chappelle’s Show (specifically the Pop Copies sketch), so we agreed and sent a big package out to California.

One of the producers sent us this photo and a letter to thank us, saying “There were 4 scenes shot at ‘comic-con,’ and the last two primarily took place in front of or right next to the Boneville booth.”

It looks better than our real booth! The show is tentatively scheduled to air Sept. 24.

Last Thursday night Vijaya and I attended the Inaugural Gala of Geppi’s Entertainment Museum.  Steve Geppi is the CEO & President of Diamond Comic Distributors and a huge collector of comic books, toys, movie posters and original art.  It would be fun to come back sometime when I could spend more time, but the event was unbelievably crowded and filled with people I hadn’t seen for a while, so I spent more time socializing than looking at the exhibits.  I did slip off and catch a few interesting things…

…such as this moment with Beanworld cartoonist Larry Marder pressing his nose against the glass of an original Geo. Herriman Krazy Kat Sunday page…

Seeing my name on a Timeline list of Copper Age cartoonists. The Copper Age? 

Don Rosa , cartoonist of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, standing with Maggie Thompson, editor of Comic Buyer’s Guide and CBGXtra .

With Jerry Robinson , the co-creator and artist of Batman and Robin.

Bob & Gina Chapman of Graphitti Designs .

An entire hallway of George Herriman originals… Thirty of them! This was where I spent most of my time. Yes, there were other things in the museum besides Herriman originals, but I didn't care.

This is a letter from Walt Disney to Geo. Herriman’s daughter Mabel. It reads:

Dear Miss Herriman:

I am taking this opportunity to express to you my sorrow at the untimely loss of your father. As one of the pioneers in the cartoon business, his contributions to it were so numerous that they may well be never estimated.

Sincerely,
Walt Disney

A little look into a cartoonist’s thoughts. This alone was worth the trip.

First thing to do after making the original sketch , is mock up the layout to finalize the composition on 8 1/2 x 11 copy paper. I've also worked in the character Mickey holding a spy glass.

Once these layout decisions are made, I can blow up the layout on the copier (121%) and lightly trace it onto 14" x 17" two-ply bristol board for the real drawing, which you see here, tightened up in blue pencil.  Since my deadline is end of day Tuesday, and Steve still has to color it, I guess I'll have to ink the little rascals sometime this weekend.