The 1990s, for the most part, were where creativity went to die in the field of comic books. More effort was put into gimmick covers than into creating characters that weren’t shade of more established characters, Only a few titles escaped this cultural morass. One of them was Bone.
Created by Jeff Smith, the series told the adventures of three cousins, Phoney Bone, Smiley Bone and Fone Bone, who are exiled from their native Boneville and are desperate to get back. However, they get drawn into a struggle to free a neighboring valley from the influence of evil.
The book has been optioned by Warner Brothers, but has been languishing on development hell since 2008, with Muriel’s Wedding director P.J. Hogan briefly attached to the project. But there has been action recently that might mean good things for a Bone film.
The Hollywood Reporter states that Mark Osborne, director of The Little Prince and co-director of Kung Fu Panda, has been tapped to direct an animated adaptation of Bone and will work on the script with Adam Kline.
Osborne seems to have the skill use the advances in computer animation to do right by the concept. No time frame has been given for the film as of yet.
To call Bone one of the best comic books of the 1990s would be an insult. It is one of the best comics of all time. It won ten Eisner Awards and eleven Harvey Awards, the highest honors a comic book can get. It a series with the charm of Walt Kelly’s Pogo with the complexity of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. A series both kids and adults could love without either’s intelligences being insulted. Any film would both be impossible to screw up but also hard to get exactly right. I eagerly await more news about this project in the months to come.
