'Bone'.
Born and raised in the American Midwest, Jeff Smith is best known as the author of the self-published comic strip 'Bone'. Smith was influenced by Carl Barks, Will Eisner, Walt Kelly and E.C. Segar. After four years of drawing the 'Thorn' comic strip for Ohio State's student newspaper The Lantern, starting in 1982, Smith co-founded the Character Builders animation studio in 1986. On 27 October 1989, he attended a lecture by Bill Watterson at the Ohio State University, titled 'The Cheapening of the Comics'. During this speech, Watterson criticized commercialism of comics. Smith was so taken by Watterson's words that he took his own comic strip to a different publisher to keep his creative freedom. In 1991, he launched his epic comic, 'Bone'.
'Bone' #25 (Jan 1998).
'Bone' has been printed in nine languages around the world (Lambiek was proud to produce the Dutch translation), and in 1996 was given the National Cartoonists Society award for Best Comic, as well as France's Angoulême Alph-Art award for Best Foreign Book, Sweden's Adamson Award, and the comic book industry's own Harvey Award (named for Harvey Kurtzman, the creator of Mad) for Best Cartoonist.
'Rasl' #1 (2008).
Smith has also made 'Bone' prequels, such as 'Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails' and 'Rose', in cooperation with among others Charles Vess. In addition to 'Bone', Smith has written and drawn 'Captain Marvel' ('Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil') for DC Comics. He is the designer for Fantagraphics reprint series of Walt Kelly's 'Pogo', and the cover artist for Kelly's 'Our Gang' reprints. In 2008, Cartoon Book launched Smith's new comic book series, 'Rasl'.
Jeff Smith was an influence on Wes Alexander, Alexis E. Fajardo, Stefan de Groot, Faith Erin Hicks, Erik Kriek and Dana Simpson. His work has also been praised by veteran cartoonist Matt Groening and by novelist Rick Riordan (of 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians' fame).
Jeff Smith in Erlangen, 1998 (Photo courtesy of Henrik Bernd).