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.