J. Bone and the Case of the Dickish Juror: An Instagram Comic

If you've been reading this site for any length of time you probably know that we're big fans of J. Bone, the Canadian cartoonist who's inking work you've seen in such beautiful Darwyn Cooke books as Will Eisner's The Spirit, Wolverine/Doop, Justice League: The New Frontier, and The Shade. Of course Bone's an artist in his own right, contributing variously exciting, funny and sexy work to comics like IDW's The Rocketeer Adventures 2 and DC Retroactive: Wonder Woman.

One of my favorite things about Bone is his tendency to sketch what he's looking at and share it almost instantly over social media like Twitter and now Instagram, something I wish more artists would do. The other day he was distracted by a teacher yelling at her students, so he looked out his window and within seconds had sketched and shared this image of a cranky, smoking, thigh-high-boots-wearing Emma Frost-style disciplinarian that's as authentic as it is cartoony. Along similar lines, Bone found himself in the worst of all situations today: jury duty. The artist brought along his sketchbook and mobile phone to keep his friends and fans abreast of the proceedings, and he gave us permission to share the results below.

If you've never been to jury duty or to court at all, you are probably not aware that the metal detector at the front door doubles as a kind of quantum destabilization field that turns the minds of everyone who passes through it into a runny kind of nasty pudding that oozes out the ears and nose. You will never find a more concentrated collection of unpleasant citizens in a single place than court, and at jury duty especially. It's as if civic obligation makes people resentful of each other. This being the 21st century, one of the most effective passive-aggressive ways of being a dick to people is with your mobile phone, and it was this kind of villain that J. Bone ran up against earlier today.

You can see loads more J. Bone art on his Gobukan site as well as on Man's Adventure, the artist's excellent beefcake blog. And stay tuned to ComicsAlliance for a very cool J. Bone announcement later this week.