Cartoon Books

There are few cartoonists more admired than Jeff Smith. Inspired himself by the serialized newspaper strips he read as a child, Smith went on to create a string of acclaimed, inspirational comics works that have not only proved evergreen in terms of story, but have brought in generation after generation of new excited cartoonists to make their own comics. Five Stars spoke to Smith about his career in comics through five milestone works, tracing a career through self-publishing, work-for-hire, and webcomics, and exploring the inspirations that inform his work.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our years on the Internet, it’s that there’s no aspect of comics that can’t be broken down and quantified in a single definitive list, preferably in amounts of five or ten. And since there’s no more definitive authority than ComicsAlliance, we’re taking it upon ourselves to compile Top Five lists of everything you could ever want to know about comics. For some reason, everyone on this site seems to be talking about fantasy stuff this week, so I thought it would be a cool idea to count down the five best heroes of sword and sorcery, battle axe and chainmail bikini.

Everyone loves comic book trivia, but with over 75 years of superhero comics behind us right now, there’s always some new obscure fact to learn. That’s why ComicsAlliance is going deep into the minutiae of your favorite names in comics in our continuing video series. You think you know comics? Well, here’s a few things you might not know! This week we're taking a look at one of the most beloved all-ages comics in the history of the medium, Jeff Smith's Bone.

The question most often asked of the ComicsAlliance staff is a variation of, “Which comic books should I be reading?” or, “I’m new to comics, what’s a good place to start?” The Wednesday deluge of new comic books, graphic novels and collected editions can be daunting even for the longtime reader, much less for those totally unfamiliar with creators, characters and publishers, and the dark mysteries of comic book shopping like variants, pre-ordering, and formats. It’s with these challenges in mind that we’ve created Best Comic Books Ever (This Week), an ongoing guide curated by the ComicsAlliance staff. This is where new comics readers and seasoned Wednesday shoppers alike can find our picks of the best books the medium has to offer.

It's been just over a year since Bone creator Jeff Smith kicked off the first season of his prehistoric webcomic Tüki Save the Humans, which gives a fictional account of the first human to leave Africa after the start of a great ice age. It's a big shift from what he was doing on Bone, and it's set to change even more in the coming season, which kicked off on Monday.

There's a lot to celebrate about the 20th anniversary of Jeff Smith's Cartoon Books, namely the birth of the all-ages Bone in 1991 and Smith's latest, more mature series RASL in 2008. Each series has been collected a number of different ways in print in the past, but starting today the first 11 issues of Bone and the up-to-date run of RASL will be available digitally via comiXology...