Jeff Smith

Open a copy of Bone — the 1,300-page epic that Time magazine called “the best all-ages graphic novel yet published” — and you’re holding the work that redefined what independent comics could achieve. Turn to RASL and you’ll find a dimension-hopping noir thriller that won the 2014 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album. That’s the range of Jeff Smith, a cartoonist whose self-published empire built one of the most beloved fantasy worlds in modern comics.

Early Life and Influences

Born on February 27, 1960, in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Smith was drawing before he could write. By kindergarten, he’d already sketched the earliest versions of the Bone cousins — those big-nosed, bald little characters who would one day become global icons. Growing up on a steady diet of Carl Barks’ Donald Duck adventures, Walt Kelly’s Pogo, Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, and Saturday morning cartoons, Smith absorbed storytelling the way other kids breathe air.

At Ohio State University, he created Thorn, a weekly comic strip for the student newspaper The Lantern that ran from 1982 to 1984. This was the proving ground where Fone Bone, Smiley Bone, Phoney Bone, Thorn, Gran’ma Ben, and the Great Red Dragon first appeared — characters who would later anchor the Bone saga. The strip earned him syndication attention, but Smith had bigger plans.

The Animation Years

In 1986, Smith co-founded Character Builders, an animation studio in Columbus, with high school classmate Jim Kammerud. For five years, they produced work for major films including FernGully: The Last Rainforest, Rover Dangerfield, and Bebe’s Kids, along with countless commercials. The experience taught Smith the business discipline he’d later need: how to manage budgets, meet payroll, and run a creative enterprise.

But the Bone characters never stopped calling. In 1991, with his wife Vijaya Iyer’s support, Smith sold his stake in the animation studio and plunged headfirst into self-publishing. “I wasn’t going to wait for permission anymore,” he later recalled.

The Bone Saga

Bone launched in July 1991 from Smith’s own Cartoon Books imprint. The story follows three Bone cousins — the kind-hearted Fone Bone, the scheming Phoney Bone, and the dim-witted but lovable Smiley Bone — who are run out of Boneville and find themselves lost in an uncharted desert valley. What begins as slapstick comedy gradually deepens into an epic fantasy involving dragon queens, rat creatures, a lost princess, and a cosmic evil called the Lord of the Locusts.

Smith wrote, drew, lettered, and handled distribution himself until Iyer left her Silicon Valley job to run the business side. The critical breakthrough came when Dave Sim featured a preview of Bone in Cerebus #161, and a rave review in Comics Buyer’s Guide followed. By 1993, Smith was winning Eisner and Harvey Awards — and he kept winning them for years.

The series ran 55 issues from 1991 to 2004. It’s been collected in multiple formats, including a celebrated black-and-white one-volume edition and full-color reprints from Scholastic’s Graphix imprint — which launched in 2005 with Bone: Out from Boneville as its flagship title. The color editions introduced Bone to a generation of young readers through school book fairs and libraries, cementing its place alongside Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings in the young-adult canon.

Bone has won 10 Eisner Awards and 11 Harvey Awards, including multiple wins for Best Continuing Series, Best Humor Publication, and Best Cartoonist. It was named to Time magazine’s list of the “Ten Best Graphic Novels of All Time.”

Rose and the Bone Universe

In 2000, Smith collaborated with legendary fantasy artist Charles Vess on Rose, a three-issue prequel to Bone that explores the youth of Gran’ma Ben — then the young Princess Rose. Vess’s lush, painterly illustrations brought a mythic dimension to the Bone world, earning an Eisner nomination for Best Painter. The story follows Rose and her jealous sister Briar as they face the dragon Mim, possessed by the Lord of the Locusts, in a tale of betrayal, courage, and sacrifice. Rose was collected in both trade paperback and hardcover by Scholastic Graphix and remains an essential chapter in the Bone saga.

RASL: A Sci-Fi Noir Turn

After wrapping Bone in 2004, Smith could have coasted. Instead, he reinvented himself. RASL (2008–2013) is a stark, black-and-white science fiction series about a dimension-jumping art thief named RASL who steals paintings from parallel universes while fleeing a shadowy government agency. It’s darker, sexier, and more cerebral than Bone — a pulpy noir for adults that won the 2014 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album: Reprint. Many fans consider it Smith’s most ambitious work.

Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil

In 2007, Smith brought his signature style to DC Comics with Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil , a four-issue miniseries reimagining Captain Marvel’s classic Golden Age origin. The series was praised for its clean, expressive artwork that balanced Silver Age charm with modern storytelling — Smith’s only major work-for-hire project to date.

Tuki: A Prehistoric Passion

TUKI: Fight for Fire represents Smith’s third self-published series. Set two million years in the past, it follows a mysterious traveler named Tuki who protects three lost children while searching for the Motherherd of all Buffalo through territory ruled by the Habiline — a rival human species that hunts anyone found using fire. Originally conceived as a webcomic, Smith completely reimagined and redrew the story during the COVID-19 lockdown, producing two complete graphic novels. The 2021 Kickstarter campaign raised $269,595 from 2,943 backers in just minutes — proof of Smith’s enduring popularity.

Legacy and Honors

Smith’s influence on comics is incalculable. He proved that a self-published comic could compete with the industry’s biggest players, and Bone’s success at Scholastic helped create the market for all-ages graphic novels that now includes creators like Raina Telgemeier, Dav Pilkey, and Kazu Kibuishi. In 2025, he received the National Cartoonists Society’s Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2026 he was nominated for the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame.

Beyond his own work, Smith co-founded Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) , a major annual comics festival, with Tom Spurgeon and Lucy Shelton Caswell.

You can follow Jeff Smith at boneville.com, on X/Twitter @jeffsmithsbone, Instagram @the_official_jeffsmith_insta, Bluesky @jeffsmithsbone.bsky.social, and Facebook. Visit Cartoon Books for the latest releases, including Tuki and the 30th-anniversary editions of Bone.

Perfect for fans of Jeff Smith’s Bone, Charles Vess’s illustrations, the whimsical fantasy of The Lord of the Rings, and the humor-infused adventure of Calvin and Hobbes.