Bone Vol. 3 "Eyes of the Storm"

Tonight, I'm writing about the second volume of Jeff Smith's Bone (published through Dark Horse Comics and Scholastic's Graphix imprint).  In this post some parts of the past volume's story will be revealed so...

SPOILERS

In this post, I talk about "Eyes of the Storm."  It's the title given to the third volume of Jeff Smith's Bone.  After the calamity of the cow race, The story takes a turn for the more serious.  There's more adventure, mysticism, and a good deal of revelations as we start to learn some of the backstory.

Now, the volume is pretty much split in half.  After repairing the farm and the cottage, Lucius takes Smiley Bone and Phoney Bone back to the Barrelhaven Tavern so that they can continue working off their debts.  One Bone stays behind with Thorn and Gran'ma Ben as they take care of the chores.  With the ominous title we get the feeling that things won't be going well.  Fone Bone and Thorn continue talking about their dreams.  They don'y why the dreams have become so strange all of a sudden or why the Red Dragon is conscious of what's going on in their dreams.  (Please don't ask why a character in this medieval setting is reading a Herman Melville book, because I'm not sure who understands that angle.)  ...  The two continue speaking about the dreams, and how they can teach us about the past and the future.  As they tend to a garden, Thorn teaches Fone about her grandmother's cultural traditions.  For example, using special stones as protections from "ghost circles."  Ghost circles are places where the barrier between the physical and the spirit worlds is especially thin.  They're places where you feel a chill that's almost unexplainable.

They get caught in a rainstorm and take cover while discussing their dreams.  Fone Bone's dream is a reenactment of Moby Dick, and the strange thing is that the dragon comes up out of the ocean.  For Thorn, it's different.  We realize that the dreams are of her when she was younger, but nobody can tell who the hooded people are that are hiding her in a mountainside with dragons.  What's stranger is that an evil person in a hood uses Fone Bone's visage to try tricking young Thorn.  Gran'ma walks in having heard them speaking of subjects that were forbidden, and she runs angrily in to the woods.  

For the length of story so far, the only problem for the other main characters was Smiley's pestering Lucius and Phoney.  Through Smiley Bone's persistence, we learn that Lucius once had a significant other, but she didn't want to marry him.  The vulnerability was cut short as they're attacked by the rat creatures.  The same thing happens to Fone Bone, Thorn, and Gran'Ma Ben.  Against the wishes of Lucius and Gran'ma (who we've learned has the first name "Rose), the Red Dragon comes to their aid in both encounters.  

Lucius takes Fone Bone's cousins to the tavern, and Phoney devises a new gamble about bar management.  Sure that the villagers won't take kindly to a stranger who had just tried swindling them, Lucius agrees.  But then, Phoney starts using the concept of dragons and the villagers' fears to start gaining the people's financial support.

Back at Gran'ma Ben's cottage, she discloses to Thorn and Fone Bone, that she and her granddaughter  are members of the royal Harvester family of the valley.  Thorn's dreams were of her family fleeing and taking cover in the dragons' stronghold of Deren Gard.  Gran'ma Ben claims that she was the traitor who got Thorn's parents killed.  Unbeknownst to them, we see updates passed from the rat creatures, to Kingdom, to an aged person in hood (the lord of the locusts), to another person.  

That is indeed one of the longest volumes of Bone.  As someone with a strong interest in mysticism, my interest in this story grows stronger.  For anyone who believes in multiple planes of existence, it seems perfectly logical that their may be ghost circles.  Then, there's the importance of dreams.  When we experience dreams, they often have some sort of meaning.  I also can't be the only one who wakes up in the morning, and searches some things up on the internet to see if the dreamscape and physical world match up.

To see the accompanying YouTube video follow this link.

Excuse Me While I Gush About Bone Vol. 2 (The Great Cow Race)

Tonight, I'm writing about the second volume of Jeff Smith's Bone (published through Dark Horse Comics and Scholastic's Graphix imprint).  In this post some parts of the past volume's story will be revealed so...

SPOILERS

As this volume kicks off, Gran'ma Ben, Thorn, and Fone Bone have had a rough night.  Thorn was having a vision in her sleep, and was awoken by a siege on her grandmother's cottage.  Kingdom's horde of rat creatures had come to the farm, ransacking the place.  As far as we know, the Bones are the only main characters who've encountered the rat creatures, so who knows what they want, aside from the one with the star on his chest (Phoney Bone).  

Gran'Ma Ben, Fone Bone, and Thorn run off to the nearby valley of Barrelhaven, and we meet Gran'Ma's old friend Lucius (the owner of the Barrelhaven Tavern).  We do find Phoney and Smiley.  Both of Fone Bone's cousins are now working off a tab at Lucius's place.  

Thorn's visions persist, and we learn about some of the big attractions of Barrelhaven.  There's a cow race where people place bets on the entries.  It's sort of like the running of the bulls in Pamplona, but more competitive.  There's also only one human running with the cattle (Gran'Ma Ben is more than your average senior citizen).  We learn more about Smiley and Phoney in that Phoney's leading a scheme to scam gamblers out of their money .  From this, we begin to get a good idea of how the cousins were run out of Boneville.  We also see that Fone Bone can have a little jealous streak.  When a honeycomb peddler at the bazaar starts hitting on Thorn and insults Fone, the Bone decides to forage for honey on his own, running into a swarm of giant bees.

We see another run-in with the rat creatures in the race (and a quiche joke), and all ends well.  Lucius joins Thorn, Gran'Ma Ben, and the Bones in returning to the farm.  We even get a quick comical vignette about Lucius and Smiley mending the roof.

Getting further into the story, I'm coming to really enjoy Bone.  Volume 2 shows us the larger world that the tale takes place in.  We meet more characters, and curiosity about Thorn's dreams continues to loom.  It also shows us what everyday life is like in this world.  There is more action and combat to come, but this adds dimension to the characters.  Just like in superhero books, I think that it's important to show what the characters are doing when they are (and aren't) in action.  

You can check out the accompanying Excuse Me While I Gush webisode here.

Excuse Me While I Gush About Bone Vol. 1 (Out From Boneville).

I'm beginning a new approach to this series (both on the Blogger and YouTube platforms).  For each feature, there will be a video on my YouTube channel where I gush in a more concise manner.  It will have a companion in my written blogs, where I go more in depth.

I decided that what had gotten me first following comics.  It was Jeff Smith's Bone.  While some of
my peers got into X-Men and Batman comics first because of the Saturday morning cartoons (which I do enjoy). I was more of a Disney fan.  I grew up in a time where there were Disney cartoons that were syndicated on the local WSBK 38 television station.  Next to the digest size Archie comics at the supermarket checkouts were these little Disney magazines called "Disney Adventures."

In 1997,  Disney Adventures was doing something that stood out to me.  I found an old Disney Adventures from December 1997 (the cover story was an interview where Robin Williams was promoting Flubber).   In there with the likes of Timon & Pumbaa and Recess was a passage from a comic that didn't seem in any way connected to Disney.  Looking through the masthead tonight, I'm realizing how Bone got in there.  Bone is primarily for DC's Dark Horse imprint, and at the time, Heidi MacDonald was the editor at Dark Horse and the Disney Adventures comics section.

The Bone features in Disney Adventures abruptly ended, and I didn't begin to catch up with the series until I was graduating from college.  About 10 years after Bone was featured in Disney Adventures, the Graphix imprint at Scholastic started releasing volumes of the complete series.  It took time for Graphix to release all 9 volumes, and I was tempted to buy the Dark Horse paperback collection.  The problem with the Dark Horse book that I found was that it was in black & white.  Remembering how beautiful Bone looked in color, I held out for Graphix.

This post is just promoting the first volume, so I won't reveal too much.  Titled "Out From Boneville",  we're introduced to three Bone creatures named Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone.  They're being run out of Boneville for reasons that we don't know, and get caught up in a swarm of locusts.  Losing track of his cousins, Fone Bone finds shelter in a forest.  He camps there fora few seasons, befriending  the local animals and trying to avoid Kingdok's rat creatures.  He learns from these little animals of a kind young woman (Thorn) who lives in a cottage with her grandmother.  Thorn takes him in so that he has a place to stay while looking for his cousins.  The gritty farmwork that Gran'ma Ben leads Thorn and eventually two bones through isn't for everyone.  Towards the end, we find out that Thorn has some mystical gifts, but that is at the hectic climax of the first volume.

I love the Bone books, and I think that many will too.  It's sort of like if you combined the Redwall novels, the Tolkien books, and the comic medium.  Maybe some of the Legend of Zelda series.  Over the course of the story, you see the see the art style get a little less rounded as the stories intensify.  There's even a fun little story about two rat creature partners who are trying to catch the (small mammals), and one insists on putting Fone Bone in a sophisticated little quiche.  I used to work at a supermarket with some fellow comic fans, and on the weekends, a variety of quiches were in the prepared foods hot bar.  Parodying an old Disney song, I would sing:

"Let's all eat with the rat creatures eat.  

Quiche. 

Quiche. Quiche.

Quiche. Quiche."

You can check out the accompanying "Excuse Me While I Gush" video by clicking here.  I'm going to continue with the Bone segments before getting into the superhero books.  I got into the X-Books during the Morrison era (thanks to Bryan Singer's first X-Men film), and will lead into the stories with some Generation X, and a big crossover event.

Gushing about the Muppets

When I started preparing to blog about The Muppets, it was to be a post for last fall.  It was early November when I was so moved by this episode about Kermit overcoming anxiety and finding a way to decompress.  Throughout the series there were many nods to Jim Henson and the legacy he created, but this one episode seemed to particularly focus on Muppets history.  The girl Kermit was seeing gave him some flowers that she pointed out as the state flower where Kermit's from (They were Magnolias.  Guess who was from Mississippi.).  Kermit consults with Rowlf (another one of Henson's oldest Muppet characters).  After learning about finding a way to relax, he rebuilt his Los
Angeles backyard into a swamp and played "Rainbow Connection".  I wanted to apply my own artistic style to this blog post, and as a starving artist, other matters got in the way.

When the show came back from its winter hiatus, the format seemed a little different.  They were trying to win over youth support.  I feel that the problem was that my generation (and younger people) were more familiar with Muppets playing other characters, and rarely see them as performers at work.  I'd like to think that Aziz Ansari's PR character overstepping his bounds in trying to build ratings was a light hearted joke about the dire situation.

When I was born, Sesame Street had been on the air for fifteen years, and the original Muppet Show (a series about puppets creating a vaudeville style variety show) had already run its course.  I was almost one month old when the Muppets Take Manhattan came out (I came upon it through VHS).  There were successful Henson shows like Sesame Street, Muppet Babies, and Fraggle Rock that while great products, seemed to reinforce the idea that Muppets only were for children.  There are people who still revere the Jim Henson Company's contributions to Star Wars, the Labyrinth, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Dark Crystal, and Never-ending Story, but I feel like it's a select few who can recognize the Grover-ness in Yoda's voice when Frank Oz is at the mic.  In the 90's, there some swings, misses, hits, and home runs.  Despite the heartbreaking finale of Dinosaurs,  the company focused on lightened interpretations of novels and a more all ages version of the Muppet Show which aired on ABC's TGIF.  The short-lived Muppets Tonight was entertaining, but it wasn't as strong as its predecessor.  There was no Vincent Price or Alice Cooper, no Milton Berle providing lyrics to "the Entertainer", or Mummenschanz. I've heard that the original Muppet Show had reruns on cable (many of us didn't have TNT or Nickelodeon back then).  While I loved the Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island, these were more like stage productions that we only saw from the seats.   With the movies, we were watching the stories depicted by our favorite actors (who in a meta way were played by our true favorite actors).  We grew up less able to open our eyes to the possibility that those actors had lives when not playing another character (when Kermit isn't playing Bob Cratchit for example).  There was a Muppets from Space and a Muppets take on the Wizard of Oz, but let's not pretend that those movies was on par with Jim's films.

In 2004, Disney acquired the rights to the Muppet characters, and production department called the Muppets Studio was established.  There were music videos where the Muppets would cover songs like Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".  The first three seasons of the original Muppet Show were released on DVD, and I couldn't believe how awesome it was.  I was one of those illustration students watching Animal and Rita Moreno play "Fever", I embraced the optical illusion when Muppet ghosts sang the Beatles' "I'm Looking Through You", and I got to watch the special features where Jim Henson, Frank Oz, and the crew are meticulously planning out each show.  It was a few years later that the Muppets Studio began a big resurgence.  In 2008, the Muppets had a wonderful holiday special on ABC (there was a bear joke that I doubt younger viewers would understand).  Then, cast members of Sesame Street had appearances on Scrubs after ABC picked up Bill Lawrence's medical sitcom.  Then, it was in the Muppets, a movie co-written by and starring Jason Segel where we followed a Muppet who felt (no pun intended) out of place in human society.   In 2014, there was the Muppets Most Wanted with Tina Fey, Ty Burrell, and Ricky Gervais. Not only were these productions shaking off the rust and portraying the Muppets as performers in their own right, but people of all ages could relate to the story.  By the way, who doesn't love Tina Fey's "the Big House" performance?

But... then... Disney and Bill Prady tried making a workplace comedy about the Muppets.  It was like a modern take on the Muppets' old variety show, but following the NBC workplace mockumentaries (the Office, 30 Rock, and Parks & Rec), the Muppets allowed a documentary crew to follow their lives behind the scenes.  Fozzy had a girlfriend whose parents didn't approve of their relationship, Gonzo moved in with Rizzo and Pepé after a fight with Carmella the chicken, and scandalously Kermit broke up with Miss Piggy.  People are still talking about how shocking the breakup was (as if these two characters were real celebrities).  Unbelievably, life was imitating art.    People hated that Miss Piggy was portrayed as an insecure diva that the world's favorite frog couldn't always tolerate, BUT THAT"S WHO SHE"S ALWAYS BEEN, dating back to her earliest performances.  This mockumentary was pulling back the curtain to display what could be behind the scenes, and people were resenting the show for doing so.

In my eyes, this was a masterful idea.  I would nerd out with some friends (one my age, and one's a retired chaplain who loves puppetry) over what's being done with the Muppet Show.  And... the "Rainbow Connection" episode moved me to tears.

Last Thursday, the series got cancelled (something even us fans could see coming).  I really hope the Muppets dust themselves off and continue with this muppetry Renaissance.  "Avenue Q" has shown that adults can embrace sophisticated puppet shows directed towards them.  But, the American viewers may not be ready for a modern answer to the Muppets Show.  David Grohl jamming with Dr. Teeth & the Electric Mayhem is not enough to keep a show on the air if the prime demographic's refusing to watch.  I look forward to another Muppets movie now that I've seen the kind of work that can be created.  Maybe, a series can be developed for the European market before reaching the America's (Jim Henson turned to London when the American TV industry was doubtful about Primetime puppet show).  I also really enjoyed the Jim Henson Company's reality TV competitions and the Thanksgiving movie that premiered on Lifetime channel last year.  Mainstream  Henson Company shows still seem primarily directed towards children's programing, but I've been reading about the "Henson Alternative" banner.  Though I don't have Fusion Channel anymore, I'm able to watch No, You Shut Up! (like a puppets and humans answer to the Daily Show) and there's a surreal web series called Neil's Puppet Dreams.  

So, have fun, and enjoy these puppet shows no matter what your age.  Me?  I'm going to continue to support both Muppets Studio and the Jim Henson Company in the ways that I can and enjoy what their productions.