Bone Creator Jeff Smith Is Finally Reprinting His Thorn Comic Strips

By Russ Burlingame

Bone creator Jeff Smith has finally decided to release Thorn, a college comic strip he worked on in the 1980s that served as a precursor to Bone. A complete collection of the strips will be launching on Kickstarter in October, with an eye toward a 2024 release. The project comes to life just as Smith is ready to release Bone: More Tall Tales, a collection of old one-shot stories and new content. Cartoon Books made the announcement today, revealing that Thorn: The Complete Proto-Bone College Strips From 1982 to 1986, will be released soon, with other early work from Smith's cartooning career included as bonus content.

The press release took great pains to point out that, if Smith had his way, the collection might not have happened. 

"Talking Jeff into this book wasn't easy, but fans have been asking us for years." explains Cartoon Books Publisher Vijaya Iyer, Smith's partner. 

"I confess I was a hard sell at first," says cartoonist Smith, "Talk of reprinting the Thorn comics has always been a non-starter for me. I didn't think they were very good. In fact, I had an unshakable idea that they were terrible. But when I read them for the first time in over 40 years, I was surprised to find I enjoyed them! It's fun to see these stories and know they eventually evolved into Bone." 

The comic strips reveal an early version of Bone called Thorn that was written for a college audience in the 1980s. Thorn appeared five days a week in the pages of The Ohio State University's student newspaper The Lantern. A few were reprinted in a self-published 1983 book called Thorn: Tales from The Lantern. Another small selection was published in 2008's limited edition fundraiser for OSU's Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum called Before Bone. Both books are long out of print and sell at collector's prices. There has never been an official, complete run published until now. 

The edition includes plenty of bonus material such as recently discovered early drawings of the Bone characters, essays and interviews. Thorn: The Complete College Strips will be published in both hardcover and mass market paperback. It will launch on Kickstarter this October for release in Spring of 2024.   

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