Jeff Smith (cartoonist)
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Jeff Smith (born 1960) is an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the self-published comic book series Bone. He has also worked for Character Builders Animation as an art director. He currently resides in Columbus, Ohio.
Biography
Jeff Smith was born on February 27, 1960 in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. His family moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he displayed an interest in cartoons dating back to as early as kindergarten. Smith made his mind up to become a cartoonist at nine years of age after a classmate brought a copy of some of Walt Kelly's Pogo comics to school.
While attending the Ohio State University, Smith created a daily four-panel strip for the student newspaper, The Lantern. That strip, called Thorn, introduced the characters that would later populate his comic book series Bone.
Smith ultimately published 55 issues of Bone between 1991 and 2004, blending influences from artists and writers such as Walt Kelly, Carl Barks, and J.R.R. Tolkien. The black and white comic book proved very successful, and has been collected in a number of trade paperback and hardback collections.
In 2003, Smith began work for DC Comics on a miniseries starring Captain Marvel, a superhero character Smith is a fan of.[1] The series, entitled Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, was published in four prestige format issues in 2007, and later collected into a hardcover edition.
In 2007, Fantagraphics Books named Smith as the designer for an upcoming series of books collecting the complete run of Walt Kelly's Pogo. He also designed the cover art for Say Anything's album In Defense of the Genre.
Smith released the first issue of RASL, "a stark, sci-fi series about a dimension-jumping art thief with personal problems", in February, 2008. A six page preview was shown on the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con. Originally intending RASL to be released in an over-sized format, Smith consulted with retailers who unanimously cautioned him against the unconventional size[2]. Smith now self-publishes RASL as a standard-sized, ad-free, black and white comic book.
Smith's art was featured in a pair of museum shows in Columbus during summer 2008: "Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond" at the Wexner Center for the Arts, and "Jeff Smith: Before Bone" at the Cartoon Research Library of The Ohio State University. The exhibits were featured in a segment on the PBS news program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on July 21, 2008.