THE EVENT everyone here at Cartoon Books has been waiting for finally arrived, and we couldn't have been more excited. When we first arrived and took the stairs down to the exhibit, we were greeted by the huge mural Jeff did exclusively for this show. The place was packed!

Jeff meets some young fans.  On either side of him are his parents, Barbara & William Smith.

Left to right: Ron Price, Raphael Rosado, Leslie Hough and Jeff.

Jeff with Harvey Pekar. 

Harvey Pekar, Jeff, and Jenny Robb from the Cartoon Research Library

Jeff and Scott McCloud. 

The Moores, Robin & Terry. 

Terry Moore givin his thumbs up to Jeff's work. 

Robin and Karen Shaffer.

Steve in front of the mural that he colored… 

…Jeff and Steve discussing who did the most work on the mural. 

Incredible food and drinks.

Kathleen with her folks.

Vijaya and Tom Leckrone. 

Steve with our friend and clay artist extrodinaire Lisa Bare Culp.

Jeff with Jenny Robb and Karen Bell, Dean of the College of the Arts. 

Animation pals: Jeff, Jim Kammerud, and Dan Root. 

Charles Vess, Karen Shaffer, Jeff and Jenny Robb.

At the end of a long evening, we all head out to a favorite watering hole to unwind.

On the way, as the gallery is closing down, we all get our pictures taken in front of the mural… 

Terry Moore, Jeff, Vijaya, and Charles Vess. 

Cartoon Book Staffers: Kathleen, Jeff, Tom, Steve and Vijaya.

And finally, J & V by themselves.

Related links:

The Daily Cartoonist interviews BONE AND BEYOND curators David Filipi and Lucy Caswell  

The Columbus Dispatch

Newsarama

The Beat 

Hi everybody, Tom here with another update on the exhibition that is only days away. Things are really starting to come together as you can see from the following pics.

Steve, Vijaya and Jeff waiting for the gallery space to open. 

Vijaya admiring a Geo. Herriman original. 

Jeff can't take his eyes off the E.C. Segar strip. 

V & J with Fone Bone. 

Jeff just noticed that the Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge page is signed! 

The original art for the final cover of BONE, issue #55. 

A  double page spread from  SHAZAM! The Monster Society of Evil.

The six page preview story from RASL. 

Just outside the gallery, a huge mural that Jeff created is being hung one panel at a time using hydraulic lifts. 

Jeff checks out the seam between panels. 

The first two panels are up! Kathleen and I (Tom) stand next to the wall for scale. 

Steve and Jeff chatting with Ohio State University President Gordon Gee. 

Yesterday, Steve and I popped over to the Wexner Center to see how the gallery is coming along as they start hanging the art.  The show opens May 10th, and things are starting to come together. It's called Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond and has 75 original BONE pages as well as lots of original comics art from artists I love, like E.C. Segar, Walt Kelly (that's a POGO Sunday page I'm holding in the photo above), and George Herriman.  This exhibition has been organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Cartoon Research Library, The Ohio State University. The curators are David Filipi and my long time friend Lucy Shelton Caswell.

Here Lucy and I marvel at a Thimble Theatre Popeye page.  

Gary Trudeau originals. 

We had a heck of a time finding a Carl Barks original comics page, but there it is on the left! 

We're waiting on huge vinyl versions of Bone art to cover the walls before we hang everything. 

A George Herriman original Sunday. Looking at his brush strokes and scratched out white spaces is like looking at the Holy Grail.

Steve checks out the exhibit catalog which has essays by Scott McCloud and Neil Gaiman. We'll show you more of that in another post.

Here's a link to the Wexner's official web page, and on it is a short, but fancy HD film-o-mercial they made to promote the event.

Click here to see the Wexner Bone and Beyond film.  

We are also moving our site to a new server, so please excuse any hiccups with Boneville for the next few days! 

Congratulations Steve! This is a great accomplishment. Good Luck, I hope you win. Here are a couple of examples of why he was nominated.

Steve will attending the San Diego Comic-Con where the Eisner Awards will be held on July 25, 2008.

You can see the complete list of nominees here. 

Posted by Tom 

Wizard magazine lists BONE #1 in two of its countdown categories. "The 200 Greatest Comics in Wizard's History" and "Collecting 1991-2008: The 20 most valuable, non-variant comics in Wizard's History. 

BONE #1 ranked as the seventh best comic in Wizard history and third (at $250) in the most valuable category. Congrats Jeff!

You can buy a copy of Wizard 200 at your local comic book shop or click here to buy it direct from Wizard.