Having Frank Miller and Alex Ross do alternate covers for your "comeback issue" [Issue #38] probably helps.

Yeah, having friends like Alex Ross and Frank Miller did help - and they did step in just for that very reason: to make sure that the first book I did on the way back would get everybody's attention.

And my numbers didn't seem to fail at all; in fact, obviously, the Frank Miller/Alex Ross issue sold very well, and then immediately my numbers were pretty much back where they were before - and have stayed there ever since then. I apparently have not paid much of a penalty, knock on wood.

Right. Well, let's talk a little about issue 55, the final issue of "Bone." You told the Onion, and I quote, "There's some good fun/wow stuff coming." Care to offer any hints on what we'll be seeing?

Well.... One of the reasons I was able to accept a conventional good-versus-evil battle scene is because that is not how the book ends. I do have this other ending that involves Thorn and Fone Bone in the Dreaming with the Locust - and it's a very Stanley Kubrick thing. [laughs] And it's what I've been going for the whole time. It's a nice piece, and I can't wait to draw it. It's going to be hard, and it's a show-stopper in some ways.

Whether anybody likes it - that I can't promise. But that's about as much of a hint of that as I want to give.

Now, we've seen images of a giant locust that represents the Lord of the Locust throughout the "Bone" books, including "Rose." Is that what the Locust will actually look like when we really see him in the Dreaming with Thorn and Fone Bone?

We ... will see him in action.

Okay. Are there any panels in Bone 55 that you're dreading drawing?

Yes. There are some that are just technically going to be very difficult - little sequences - and there's some that are just going to be hard to draw because there's so much going on. I thought about getting some of my computer-animation friends to help me with some of these sequences - [have them make] models or something that I can trace, because there's going to be some crazy stuff to do.

The first comic with animatics.

[laughs] Exactly! The first comic with Pre-Viz!

I've read that Dave Sim and Gerhard, when they're drawing large structures, will actually build models of some of the buildings.

I've seen that. That's actually pretty cool. There's a lot to be said for staging - actually knowing where your characters are in relationship to the building they're in. It's very easy to confuse your readers if you don't give them visual clues to where everybody is in the room at all times.

I should point out that most of that ["fun/wow stuff"] is going to happen in issue 54. Fifty-five will be the dessert. There's a lot of good stuff in 55, but the real "fun/wow" stuff, that's gonna be 54.

Oh, we're close. Things are falling apart right now. Wait 'til you go read 52.

Will we finally find out what young Thorn has been looking at when she's with all those dragons in the flashback sequences?

Oh, of course.

Is it the Crown of Horns?

We'll have to see.

ORIGINS: POGO, JUVENILIA and ANIMATION

You've said that your early Ohio State Lantern college strips were sort of a cross between the current "Bone" and "Doonesbury" - but you've also said you don't like looking at those strips now. I'm just wondering why.

Well ... because they suck. [laughs]

Well. There you go.

They're just awful. I mean, any artist who looks back at something he did more than 10 years ago is gonna cringe, just because the more you draw, the better you get - it's sort of automatic. And I look back at those, and they're so awful. I mean, the characters look different in every single panel, and the humor was all very sophomoric.

So it was a typical college comic strip.

Any chance where I could have a tree limb tear Thorn's shirt off, that's what I needed to do, you know? [laughs]

Has anyone ever turned up at a signing with one of those 2,000 copies you sold of your college-strip collection?

About once a year, someone brings one up to me. And it's in crazy places - like in Finland. I guess they got it over eBay or something.... I have a box of about a hundred [books] left.

The way you've described it, it sounds like you might have been striving for a bit of a "Pogo" tone in some of those early college strips.

Well, "Pogo" was a huge influence on me. I think I was 9 when I saw a "Pogo" book; it was like 1969, and someone brought a "Pogo" collection book to school - a collection of the daily comic strips. And I was blown away by it - because not only was the artwork so gorgeous, and the linework was lush, but it looked like a Disney movie; that was the kind of quality that was in the cartooning.

And it was fat; a comic book that thick, I thought, was the greatest thing I'd ever seen. So I really studied Walt Kelly and "Pogo" from then on out.

Didn't Walt Kelly work in animation? He used to be a Disney guy, didn't he?

Oh, yeah - he worked on "Pinocchio" and "Dumbo." He worked on the famous crow sequence in "Dumbo." He was a Disney animator, and after his Disney experience he came back to the East Coast and started doing "Pogo."

You have an animation background. How much animation training did you actually have?

Um, none. [laughs] A very good friend of mine from elementary school, we were in college together, and we were fascinated by animation. We shared a similar taste in comics and cartoons. We got a hold of a book that two Disney animators had done - Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson - called Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life. And in it, two of Disney's Nine Old Men decided that they wanted to capture how they did the animation before it was too late - before it was gone.

We got this book and it was like, "Here's all the secrets to Disney animation" - and for fun, we would try them. We built our own little peg-boards and light-boxes, punched our own paper for registration holes, and taught ourselves out of that book. I can't remember when it came out, but it was the really early '80s, and Disney animation was pretty much a thing of the past. This was before "Little Mermaid".... I think the best thing from that period was "The Aristocats."

So what kind of gigs was Character Builders, your animation company, doing?

Well, when we started, it was this friend I was talking about, Jim Kammerud, and another friend we'd met at Ohio State University, Marty Fuller. The three of us thought, "What if we could make some money doing local commercials?" And Marty had some contacts in the advertising industry, so we did a lot of public-service announcements and ads for local grocery stores.

And then, slowly, we began to get work from Hollywood studios that would have a big movie going on, and they would farm out individual scenes. We'd also work on television shows like "Doug"; they'd send us the storyboards and we would do all the layouts.

So you're kind of a Disney alum by association.

I suppose, yeah. I don't think "Doug" was Disney back then. We worked on "Bebe's Kids" and "Rover Dangerfield." [pause] We were not responsible for those....

And then, after I left Character Builders, I sold my share to my partners; they've gone on and worked on every animated feature film except for Disney that happened in the '80s and '90s - that huge boom. Now they do a lot of Disney direct-to-video sequels, like "Little Mermaid II" and the "101 Dalmatians" sequel, that kind of thing. They actually direct them and write them, in some cases.

When you get the "Bone" series done, have you thought about going back to Character Builders?

Oh, well, that's who I went to Nickelodeon with [on the attempted "Bone" movie]. We gave that a shot - and maybe we'll do it again. Who knows?

SPEAKING OF WHICH: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED WITH NICKELODEON and the 'BONE' MOVIE

These days, comics have a lot more reverence for their characters on the big screen; recent Marvel films have been really strong, valuing character over effects. Does that bode well for you?

As far as doing a "Bone" movie? It might. It might. I think, when you talk about Hollywood, it ultimately comes down to [whether] the person with the money looks at the project and he or she thinks they're going to make their money back. As much as "Lord of the Rings" does sweeten the environment for me, it'll come down to that money person making a decision.

Did you ever run into any trouble because the name of your property was "Bone"?

[laughs] Not in the way that you would think. No, not at all. In the mid-'90s, Disney Adventures Digest, that little check-out magazine, serialized "Bone" for about two years - it was very popular, but it also gave me the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, you know? If Disney could run something called "Bone," then that wasn't the problem.

[laughs] Good point.

Where I ran into a problem is when we began having meetings about "Bone" with Nickelodeon, and we just began to over-analyze everything. They felt Thorn was the character who actually had the greatest story arc - which is true - and they're starting to think, "Well, maybe the movie should be called 'Thorn.'" And of course "Thorn" is what I called the strip in college, so I had this opposite realization and journey, where I took the story back to the Bones. But that's about the only time the name ever gave me trouble.

Any truth to the reports that Nickelodeon wanted you to aim the story more squarely at kids?

Yes. Of course. I guess in some ways that's to be expected. But the truth is, we - meaning myself and the Character Builders and Vijaya - pitched Nickelodeon a fairly complete story idea. You know, we had big art boards made up, big beat boards, and we pretty much showed them the movie that we wanted to make - which would have been: The Bones get into the valley; they meet the princess; they're in the cow race; and they defeat the rat creatures. Very simple, straightforward movie.

It would have set up a sequel if necessary.

Yeah. We had an ending in and of itself, but we could have gone on to finish the larger story in a sequel if it was warranted.

Well, we got into the meetings - and like immediately, they just wanted to change everything. They wanted the Bones to be voiced by 6-year-olds - by children. They wanted to change the ending. They wanted the mood and tone of the story to be much more kid-friendly. And, I mean, we had talked about all this beforehand, so I was a little surprised.

For me, the famous moment was the suggestion that Fone Bone could have "magic gloves" so he could make things grow.

Are those the green gloves that the Fone Bone figurine packaged with the color issue #1 is wearing?

Yes. Those are the magic gloves. He has one scene in the comic when he was wearing gloves because he was helping Thorn garden - and that just happened to be a picture that some of the licensees had picked up on and used a lot. So that became kind of the iconic drawing of Fone Bone, where he had these little gloves on.

Anyway. They said, "He should have magic gloves on so he can make things grow!" And I said, "He's not Jesus Christ! Come on!" [laughs]

Oh, that's painful.

So it was a bit like negotiating through a swamp.

Any truth that they wanted a Britney Spears-style pop song?

No, they didn't want a Britney Spears-style pop song - they wanted a Britney Spears song in the film. And I like Britney Spears; I like pop culture; I like Madonna and Michael Jackson as much as anybody else. - but I had a very different kind of a film that I was trying to make.

And in the late '90s, I was really adamant that there would be no songs in the movie - because all animated feature films seem to have these awful formulaic songs. I think that's a law somewhere - "Animated film for kids? Put some crappy songs in it!"

Like when we pitched Warner Brothers while we were in Annecy. They took us out on a boat and were really wooing us - until I got to the point where I said, "I need it in writing that there will be no songs." And it was pretty much, "Swim back to shore." [laughs] That was it. That was the end.

But Nickelodeon did agree to no songs. In writing. So this pop-song thing was probably the turning point in the whole affair for me; this was about a year-and-a-half in. I mean, we had a great time with Nickelodeon - they were a lot of fun, the actual executives that we worked with. I really liked them. We would go to New York, where Viacom is, or we would go to Paramount, and we always had a wonderful time. But one day after lunch we sat down ... and the executive there turned to me and said, "Okay. We can get $12 million right now if we put a pop song in the movie. So, Jeff - do you see somewhere in the body of the film where we could put a Britney Spears or an N'Sync song?"

Oh my God.

And I just turned and looked at Vijaya, we looked at each other, and I said, "No." I mean, that's not the kind of movie that we were making. I mean, you wouldn't put a Britney Spears song in the middle of "The Empire Strikes Back" or the middle of "Lord of the Rings". And because Vijaya had insisted that clause be in the contract, they couldn't force me.

Things went downhill rapidly after that. I think I became, instead of "the director and the writer," I suddenly became "the creator who was being too protective of his little baby."

"The person they had to wrest it from."

Yes, yes. I was being too sensitive.

Did you ever have a moment where they said, "You're being too sensitive, Jeff"?

Oh, of course. [laughs] They were trying to be very gentle with me because I was the creator and I didn't want to see my babies hurt. They didn't see me as a filmmaker with a vision - at least not after I turned down 12 million dollars. [laughs]

So basically, it ate up your time, it bore little fruit, it was frustrating. Did this further validate your decision to self-publish?

Well, let me go back and say that I didn't think it was that frustrating, and I didn't think it was a waste of time. I enjoyed the experience quite a bit, and it was not all Nickelodeon's fault; part of it was my own inexperience in the system. If I could go back in time and do it again, I would have sat down first thing and storyboarded the movie that we had all agreed on to begin with. I didn't know to do that then. I didn't know - I kept thinking there would be a moment where someone would say, "Okay - start now." Do you know what I mean? So I actually thought it was a pretty good experience. I got to learn a lot about Hollywood; I got to learn a lot about story structure. In Nickelodeon's defense, they found weak points in my story - and they held my feet to the fire until I screamed and figured them out. And they ultimately did agree to a contract that allowed me to keep my rights when it didn't work out. That isn't the juicy part of the story to tell, but that's the truth.

And also, everything I do affects my comics. So not one bit of that was wasted time. I mean, it was a gamble - I could have lost my readership in comics - but that didn't happen. What was the other part of your question?

Did this further validate your decision to self-publish?

In a way, yeah. I mean, it has been our experience - Vijaya's and mine - that "Bone" only works when we do it ourselves. The syndicates were interested in "Bone" as a comic strip, but ultimately they couldn't sell it the way we wanted to do it - and the same with Nickelodeon.

What are the chances that you'll revisit the film deal after you're done making the books?

Well, I'd like to, to be honest. But will I get to? I don't know. It might be one of those things you just get the one shot at, so who knows?

But my plan is when the comic book is done, and while I'm finishing up "Captain Marvel," I plan on putting together another script. And I got a lot of calls from other studios and producers once I left Nickelodeon, and I tried to be polite and say, "Well, you know, I'd like to finish the book; can I call you back later?" So we'll see. I have a lot of phone numbers.... Maybe the time will have come and gone. We'll see.

So if I'm hearing you correctly, next time you're going to basically do what Peter Jackson did with "Lord of the Rings" - he basically had the whole movie storyboarded in advance. He showed the cast the whole film in storyboards with temp-track voices.

That's exactly right. And my understanding is that quite a few directors do that - Miyazaki, for instance - not just Peter Jackson. I mean, they see the movie in their head.

Warmest, Alexandra DuPont.