Jeff Smith’s New World, Part 2

In a break from his previous comics work, Jeff Smith is set to debut a new, darker series about a dimension-hopping art thief. The main character—a drinking, smoking, womanizing crook—is a far cry from the huggable Bone family. But running counter to expectations is nothing new for Smith, who self-published Bone while regularly crossing industry convention. Now returning to self-publishing after writing and drawing Shazam! for DC, Smith plans RASL as a two-year series of quarterly issues. In this second half of the interview, Smith finds a common thread between RASL and his previous works.

PWCW: While RASL is a darker story, do you see any similarities between it and your other books? Are there universal themes or ideas that carry through all your work?

Jeff Smith: That’s actually a very good question. On a very general level, something that underlies all my work is that there’s more to life than we can see or touch with our eyes. There’s something just beyond our sense’s ability to detect. I think that’s in Bone. That’s in Shazam!. That’s in RASL in a fairly obvious way. But that’s just something that fires me up.

On a more surface level, they’re not very similar. The way I write and draw comics, the way I do panel transitions, that should be all very similar. I have my way of telling a comic book story, the way you can tell a Steven Spielberg movie. But the actual subject matter has been different. Bone was a comedy, but it was also a fantasy. And Shazam! was kind of an adventure of wonderment. And this is going to be pretty dark and world-weary and full of danger, which is very different from anything I’ve done before.

I’m kind of excited about it because I’m stepping off an edge and I don’t know really where the bottom is.

PWCW: Bone is always going to follow you as it’s been such an incredible success. You’re known as the guy who does comics that are accessible to kids. Is that frightening at all to go away from that?

JS: Of course I think about it, because there is this audience out there that’s read Bone that’s waiting for my next project. Honestly, I don’t know if they’ll like this next thing. They might think it’s inappropriate or they may just not like it. I really have this other story I want to tell. I’m going to follow that muse. If it doesn’t work out, well, it’s only two years.

I never, in my entire time drawing comics, ever tried to change a comic because I thought that change would make it more money, or because I thought I would get in trouble. I’m going to try to do the same thing with RASL. Part of me thinks some people wanted another all-ages super-happy-friendly thing. But I also think if it’s real, meaning that I’m true to the story, I actually think that will take care of itself.

People can tell when you’re being phony. I could never have made Bone such a universal success if I had tried to.

The fact that parents and children around the globe have found Bone and claimed it as their own thrills me, but I never intended it as a children’s book. I only intended it as a book for other cartoon heads.

I have to just kind of follow the same thing with RASL now. I’m not aiming it at science fiction people or art fiends. I just have this interesting story about this guy whose life is really messed up. And he doesn’t know who to trust and he has to figure out what’s happening to him really fast.

PWCW: On your Web site, you write about going to the desert in Arizona for research. It’s interesting how it’s so bleak out there, but at the same time it can really creatively charge you.

JS: I had so much of the story figured out. I’d been thinking it over in the back of my mind for a few years now. I knew the main character and basically all the [other] characters and what the story was. But there was something missing. I didn’t know what.... Hitchcock calls it the MacGuffin, the thing in the story especially in the noir that everyone’s after. It’s the Maltese falcon in The Maltese Falcon. And I was trying to figure out what that was.

There’s so much going on in everyday life. Part of the story takes place in the southwest, in the desert. I said [to myself], I’m just going to go there and spend some time and empty my head out. Nature abhors a vacuum. So all the crap that was in your head just goes out. I was able to just listen and think and put my story together. And since part of RASL’s tale takes place there in the desert—for a reason that becomes clear in the story—I was able to be there and just immerse myself in the moment and let my mind wander until I came up with all the stuff I needed for the story and get really fired up.

PWCW: That’s awesome. Did you get all the cactus burrs out?

JS: I have two splinters, spurs, whatever you want to call them, that I can’t get out. They’re really killing me. They are wicked. Some of those cactus stickers are amazing, aren’t they?

PWCW: That whole area is insane. It’s so different from the city.

JS: The quiet is what got me. It’s so quiet. You hear wind. You hear birds flying overhead. I was like, “I hear that bird. He’s flying and I hear him.” I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a bird flapping his wings. I was terrified the whole time I was going to step on a rattlesnake. I never saw one, fortunately. But there’s so much life there. It’s so alive and not alive. I loved it. It was very inspiring.

PWCW: What’s the schedule for RASL?

JS: Bone came out every two or three months. We’re shooting for quarterly. It’ll be 32 pages. It’s a standard-sized comic. We were talking about making it real oversized, but I could tell the retailers were terrified, so I backed off.

PWCW: Do you have any other projects going on?

JS: I draw all the covers for the Our Gang reprints [published by Fantagraphics.]. I’m designing the Complete Pogo books, someday, if we ever find all the comics we need. I just did an Art of Bone book with Dark Horse. That was pretty fun. Seems to be doing pretty well. But RASL is a full-time job for a while.