The Maine Comics Arts Festival will be held at The Ocean Gateway in Portland, Maine this weekend.

Jeff’s schedule is as follows:

Saturday May 18, 2013
A panel discussion at the Main Branch of the Portland Public Library in the Rines Auditorium at 1:00 pm.
The address is
Portland Public Library
5 Monument Sq.
Portland, ME

Sunday May, 19, 2013
Show Hours 10:00 am-5:00 pm
Signing 11:00 am-1:00 pm in Upper Level of Ocean Gateway
Signing 3:00 pm-4:00 pm in Upper Level of Ocean Gateway

COME ON OVER AND SAY HI!

Jeff is interviewed by Ed Piskor, Jim Rugg, & Jasen Lex for Episode 007 of Boing Boing’s, Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. It’s an interview podcast featuring artists, writers, filmmakers, and other creative people discussing their work, ideas, and the reality/business side of how they do what they do.

Ed Piskor recently spent a month in Columbus as the Graphic Novelist in Residence at the Thurber House, childhood home of James Thurber. Ed is the cartoonist who drew the comic, Wizzywig, and draws the Brain Rot/ Hip Hop Family Tree comic strip, soon to be collected by Fantagraphics Books.

The Cotsen Children’s Library is a very special library within the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University Library. Their international research collection of illustrated children’s books, manuscripts, original artwork, prints, and educational toys from the 15th century to the present day.

BiblioFiles is a podcast put out by the Cotsen Children’s Library.

You can listen to the full interview with Jeff and peruse other interviews by going here!

Awesome pic of a Rat Creature we received this morning from a fan named Lia! THANKS Lia! It’s so cool!

Very busy here at Cartoon Books. Final adjustments are being made to the full color RASL hardcover.  We received our proofs and review copies from the printer and if all goes well, we’ll ship the final document off this weekend!

The only thing I’ll say now, is that after much handwringing and trepidation , the rich, dark colors by Steve Hamaker takes to the paper beautifully! We will share some pages in June, so stay tuned.

For now, the above is a video shot during WonderCon with Kiel Phegley for CBR. We talk about RASL, reworking and repackaging BONE, and a bit about my next project: Tuki Save the Humans.

Hello Friends! Jeff is heading to Anaheim this week for WonderCon held on March 29-31. The big news will be a first look at the Full Color RASL Hardcover on Saturday at 5pm during his Spotlight Panel!  There is also a rumor that he’ll have a teaser for his next major project! UPDATE! Signing at the CBLDF Booth Saturday. See Below for further details.

Here is his official show schedule. Come say Hi!

Friday, March 29
Quick Draw Panel
2:00-3:00pm
Room 300AB

Saturday, March 30
CBLDF Booth Signing
2:00-3:00pm
Booth 909

Saturday, March 30
Jeff Smith Spotlight Panel
5:00-6:00pm
Room 203

Sunday, March 31
Jeff Smith & Terry Moore Panel
12:30-1:30pm
Room 208

For an updated schedule of appearances near you, check here.

It’s Pi Day! (3/14)

Jeff and Kathleen’s fav is apple! Vijaya likes Bourbon Pecan! And I love em all!

BONE: Quest for the Spark Book 3 (the final chapter in the series) has been added to the store along with a great new BONE print! As long as we’re talking about the store, I wanted to let you know about these changes…

There are now three (3) sections that make up the boneville.com store:

1: Bone books

2: RASL books

3: Other Cartoon Books stuff.

KIRKUS REVIEWS: The lovably motley questing crew returns for their final stand against the looming powers of the Nacht. Young turnip farmer–cum-hero Tom Elm has finally reached the arduous apex of his journey: The scattered pieces of the Spark are quickly coming together, as are all of the beings needed to complete his epic quest. A charmingly quirky assortment of dragons, animals, a warrior, Bones and a shape-shifting forest spirit must work together to save the fate of their world. They must keep the horrible dragon named the Nacht from taking over the realm and shrouding all they know in permanent, nightmarish blackness. This is no simple feat, and they must battle truly frightening foes on their way to the final showdown: a colony of possessed, bloodthirsty giant bats that have enslaved most of a human tribe. This final volume does not disappoint, twisting and turning rapidly to a wholly satisfying—although quickly resolved—conclusion. The Bone universe has smoothly spread out from a serialized graphic-novel epic to a thrill-ride prose trilogy, an accomplishment not often seen nor executed so well. Fear not, fans: A new Bone adventure is not-so-subtly hinted at as this installment draws to a close.
Thrills, chills, twists and turns, this series ender offers it all.

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The image of Fone Bone sitting on the rock at Old Man’s Cave is a favorite for many people. We’ve turned it into a 13×19 print on radiant white watercolor paper. They are each hand signed by Jeff (which, as always, includes Ted the bug!).

This graphic was whipped up by our own Tom G. and wasn’t in the blog posted this morning by Nat Brown.  The name of the article is “Stupid, Stupid xBox.”  Brown is a founder of the original xBox project at Microsoft (and the man who claims to have given it its name), who wrote a very colorful article on the subject. He used our two favorite “intellectually challenged” rat creatures to help illustrate his points.

You can read the full post over on Nat Brown’s blog here!

Jackie Mantey, a reporter from Columbus Alive, came to the office last week to interview me about the Columbus comics scene. There have been some nice events lately, like CCAD’s MIX event that featured Chris Ware as the keynote speaker; the current comics show being put on by the Ohio Art League; as well as The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum’s up coming move to grander quarters on campus. And apparently there’s an old fart self-publisher lurking about on the city’s south side.

You can read the full online article here.