Coming To Kickstarter In October: Jeff Smith’s ‘THORN: The Complete Proto-BONE College Strips From 1982-1986 And Other Early Drawings’

Through my work with GVN, I have had the pleasure of talking to some iconic comic creators. Perhaps no one was as cool to me as Jeff Smith, Creator of Bone. This was in preparation for his release of his two Tuki books. But now, Jeff has finally been coerced into bringing his original Thorn college strips into a collection. One that introduced many of his Bone characters for the first time. This new collection comes to Kickstarter in October and is scheduled for a Spring 2024 release. This exciting news was explained in the following Press Release by the good folks at Cartoon Books.

NYT Bestselling Author Jeff Smith Returns to his Roots With a New Collection of His THORN College Strips to Launch in October Kickstarter

Columbus, OH – July 18, 2023: Cartoon Books announces THORN: The Complete Proto-BONE College Strips from 1982 to 1986, And Other Early Drawings, reprinting the entire run of his earliest rendering of the world-famous BONE characters for the first time. And if Smith had his way, it might not have happened.

Cartoon Books Publisher Vijaya Iyer

Talking Jeff into this book wasn’t easy, but fans have been asking us for years.

Jeff Smith

I confess I was a hard sell at first. 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 History of Thorn

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.

This beautiful 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.

About Jeff Smith

Jeff Smith is the award-winning author best known for his self-published BONE comic book series that was later picked to launch Scholastic’s YA graphic novel imprint, Graphix. Other works by Smith included RASL, SHAZAM: Monster Society of Evil, TUKI, and the forthcoming BONE: More Tall Tales.

For fans of Jeff Smith’s Bone, this should be a great addition to their collection. We will be following this and putting out more information as the Kickstarter campaign approaches.