Academy Award-winning animator John Canemaker will be writing a monthly column about animation for printmag.com. This interview with Jeff about the upcoming BONE movie, is his first.

Canemaker says, “In my opinion, Bone’s Chapter Five, “Eyes of the Storm” is one the greatest 20 pages of cinematic storytelling in the history of comics”.

You can read the entire interview here.

Starting next week, on Chicago’s PBS WISE TV (WYCC) the Cartoonist will air. You will have three chances to catch it.

March 8 at 2:00 PM, March 9 at 4:00 AM and March 15 at 4:00AM

Set your dvr’s!

You can see the full lineup of the station here.

It’s a good thing Jeff’s still hard at work in his studio finishing RASL #7, and not in the office seeing me do this. Please help me in wishing Mr. Smith a Very, Very Happy Day! We love ya Jeff!

Things have been very busy here at Cartoon Books as we gear up for RASL 7 and c2e2, and I wanted to share some interviews that Jeff has done recently. A magazine from Italy called “Scuola di Fumetto” can be read in English here.

And back in October, we traveled to San Francisco to attend APE (the Alternative Press Expo). Geoff Chapman from The Electric Playground sent over a link to their site with an interview that he conducted. You can see that by clicking here.

As Jeff told us last July, new BONE books are on the way. Scholastic has shared their early 2010 publishing schedule and Comic Book Resources has the breakdown here.

Hi everybody, Tom again. I just wanted to share some great tattoos that some fans have sent in.

Can’t ya just feel the love? I probably should have saved these 2 pics for a Valentine’s Day blog.

If you have a BONE tattoo, be sure to send it to us. We love them!

Thanks Brandon! It’s awesome!

The American Library Association just announced its 2010 awards: they rewarded the very small publisher TOON Books (which published 3 books last year) with two of its top prizes. The ALA’s Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for most distinguished beginning reader goes to Benny and Penny in The Big No-No! by beloved author and artist Geoffrey Hayes who said: “Winning the Geisel is especially meaningful to me as I spent much of my career focusing on easy readers and trying to promote children’s literacy. To receive an award named after one of the giants of children’s books is a tremendous honor.” A second TOON Book, Little Mouse Gets Ready by Jeff Smith of BONE fame is one of four Honor books for the Geisel. Last year a Geisel Honor was awarded to Stinky, by talented newcomer Eleanor Davis (Stinky was Davis’ first book, started while she was still in school.)

“Even though the speech balloons and the visual storytelling inherent in comics are great for children learning to read, nobody had ever published comics for kids that young before. Starting a new publishing venture in 2008 was quite a challenge! When I offered the TOON Books to major publishers, they all said: ‘It’s a wonderful concept, beautifully executed, but we’re not in a position to start a new category,’ ” recalls TOON Books’ Editorial Director Françoise Mouly (who’s also the Art Editor of The New Yorker.) “So I decided to publish myself; the Geisels and all the other awards the TOON books have gotten are deeply gratifying.”

The TOON Books collection of innovative easy-to-read comics, designed and vetted for beginning readers, was launched in the Spring of 2008. For a start-up publisher to have such a strong presence in the ALA awards is testament to the special quality of these ‘“lovingly produced and winsomely written (Time Out)” hardcover beginning readers, and to the inspiring role comics can have in turning young children into life-long readers. In their Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics, an anthlogy for all ages published by Abrams’ ComicArts last fall, Mouly and her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman, write: “The once disreputable comic book confidently strides into bookstores, museums and universities cleverly disguised as the upwardly mobile ‘graphic novel.’ ” …And now sweeps the major awards for early readers at the ALA!

Frantically trying to keep up with the sudden demand, TOON books just announced that it’s reprinting the award-winning Benny and Penny in The Big No-No! and Little Mouse Gets Ready as well as advancing the publication date of Geoffrey Hayes’ latest Benny and Penny book, The Toy Breaker, to April 6, 2010. April 6 is also the release date for Zig and Wikki in Something Ate my Homework, TOON’s first science-based early reader comic (http://toon-books.com/book_zig_about.php), so that two new TOON Books will join the current list of nine books at the same time as the reprint of the award books.

For review copies and more information, please visit: www.TOON-BOOKS.com

They’re here! We just got our copies of RASL no.6, and they look great. You can pick yours up at your local comic shop tomorrow Jan. 20th, or from our online store by clicking here!

KCSM-TV in San Mateo, California, will air the CARTOONIST: JEFF SMITH, BONE AND THE CHANGING FACE OF COMICS
at  9:30 pm and then again on Thursday, January 21st at 2:30 am

Also, The Cartoonist documentary made the Booklist Editor’s Choice Best of 2009. Three and a half out of four stars. Not bad, Ken! (Ken Mills is the director) Congratulations!

Best of the Decade lists are not easy to make. Choosing ten seems arbitrary when you have to start knocking good books off, but you have to stop somewhere, so below I give you my dirty dozen. Still arbitrary, and a bit dirty because another five or so could have roughed their way in. Not to mention all the books I’ll remember the moment I post this…

Regrets aside, here are my favorites of the decade, in order of publication:

100% by Paul Pope 2002

No one draws noir comics like Paul. With undercurrents of sex, survival, grit and brutality, his cities are labyrinths crowded with neon signs, telephone wires, trash, fire escapes, and menacing shadows. All the near-future sci-fi in 100% holds up, too.

Blankets by Craig Thompson 2003

It took me a while to warm up to this book. I loved Thompson’s first book Good-bye, Chunky Rice so much, and at first Blankets seemed a bit too precious or sentimental for me. I have since gone crazy for Craig’s drawing style. I have revisited the book and found the story to be honest and engaging. And there’s no denying its impact on the culture of long form comics; Blankets, when it appeared complete at 600 pages, blew our minds.

Louis Riel by Chester Brown 2004

Louis Riel by Chester Brown is one of my favorite comics. I’ve always loved Chester’s art work, but he hit new heights with this one. The drawings are full of black ink and the figures are solid and chunky. A lot of people have noted the influence of Harold Gray, and while true, it still has that Chester Brown otherworldliness and is damn fun to look at. I knew nothing of Canadian hero/anti-hero Riel before, but I don’t think that made much difference; the story is fascinating and well told.

The Complete Peanuts 2004

This is a gimme. Collecting the complete works of the most important cartoonist of the second half of the century needed to be done.  But as obvious as it seems, the format chosen by designer Seth and publisher Fantagraphics wasn’t.  They chose to run the strips in chronological order, six daily comics followed by a Sunday strip. In twenty-five hard cover volumes. Revolutionary.

Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley 2004

What fun! Everything about this book is a gas. It sort of makes fun of Manga, and yet it kind of is Manga. Scott’s sort of awesome, but he’s also kind of a dick. The characters are deceptively simple versions of hipster/slacker friends; ex-girl friends, gay roommates, and garage bands playing out in campus dives, and at the same time, nothing is cliched. The fact that Scott Pilgrim has to defeat all of his new girlfriend’s evil ex-boyfriends  - -in full blown, over the top, shopping mall destroying battle – -just clinches it.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel 2006

I have to think this was a difficult thing to do, putting yourself and your real family out there in a comic book, with every possible embarrassing and dysfunctional foible on display, and yet the results are transforming. Strangely, I felt by the end that I actually knew Alison’s father. A great book. And Fun Home was named Time Magazine’s Book of the Year!

Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip 2006

I only discovered the Moomins a few years ago while on a book tour in Finland, where the characters are still revered. But it wasn’t until I read this series of beautiful collections from Drawn & Quarterly that I really understood what the hub-bub was about. Gentle creatures with real human emotions, and surreal through-the-looking-glass stories. They remind me a little of Walt Kelly’s Pogo.

Flight 4 edited by Kazu Kibuishi 2007

I love all the Flight anthologies, and I’m friends with many of the artists, but volume 4 stood out to me as a solid collection of work from an emerging generation of cartoonists. It also contains what are, in my opinion, the two best short stories of the decade:  Farewell, Little Karla by Tom Herpich, and Roomie-Pal by Graham Annable.

Rice Boy by Evan Dahm 2008

Rice Boy began life as a serialized web comic in 2004, and once the story was finished, it became a print-on-demand book. I came across it at a comic book show on the East coast. It’s a bit pricey, but it’s small press, and that’s what it cost to print. And it’s worth it. The full color art is clean, simple and inviting. The story flows in a very stream of conscious way, but still leans into the ending. It took me a couple of days to read Rice Boy, and when I wasn’t reading it, I couldn’t wait until I was.

Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw 2008

At the beginning of Bottomless Belly Button, Shaw asks us to take breaks between the different parts of the book. For some reason I did so, and I think it was a good thing. All in all, this book was surprising to me. First, it’s so fat. There aren’t that many fat books on the Graphic Novel shelf. I like fat books. Second, the story is unexpectedly compelling; starting off with impressionistic images of beaches and a hand  pushing down in the wet sand, it slowly becomes the turning point in the life of a family torn apart by divorce.  I was also impressed by the mysteries in the story – - and really impressed by Shaw’s restraint in revealing only what he had to – - leaving much for the imagination, and keeping my thoughts on the book and its meaning for days afterward.

The Complete Essex County by Jeff Lemire 2009

The first of the Essex County books was Tales from the Farm, which came out in 2007. It was followed by two sequels, Ghost Stories and The Country Nurse.  The three Essex County books make up one of the best, and most organically interlocked trilogies I have ever read. The moment Lemire lets you know how these books are connected, you’ll raise your eyebrows and try to swallow the lump in your throat.

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb 2009

What can I say? It’s Crumb doing the Bible! There probably isn’t a cartoonist who hasn’t harbored an ambition to try something like this at one time or another. I know I have.  The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb is a straight take on the first book of the bible, and a near perfect one too, but after reading it, it’s definitely all Crumb. And you know what? He actually drew Jewish people. Maybe this says more about me than about Crumb, but after reading his version, I realized that I actually couldn’t draw any part of the bible…and maybe shouldn’t try.

There it is. For what it’s worth, my favorite comics of the decade. It was a great ten years for comics; graphic novels came into their own, spilling out of the comic shops and into mainstream bookstores and libraries. Hollywood fell in lust, making comics-based  blockbusters and independent films. Web comics exploded. And as I traveled the world, I saw a huge, new generation of young cartoonists overflowing with ideas and enthusiasm, who had no preconceived ideas of what comics are, or what they could be about.  Let’s see what’s next.

Lastly, I’d like to say a quick thanks to everyone who put Bone on one of their best of lists. The Bone: One Volume Edition appeared in 2004, and the color Scholastic series started in 2005, but the truth is, even though Bone finished up mid-decade, I sort of think of it as a nineties thing, so I was surprised and happy it wasn’t forgotten. A few of the lists that include Bone are The Onion’s A/V Club and Paste Magazine, both pop culture publications that cover comics, and The Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Indigo & Chapters Bookstores Book Lover’s Best of the Decade. Thank you!

See you next year…