Day Sixty-Seven: Bone of Contention (Or, Indy Comics' Biggest Jerks)
Okay, so maybe you're tired of it by now, but let's have just one more day of jerks in comics - this one, at least, isn't from a Marvel book. Instead, he's an endearing little chappie whose cute appearance masks a calculating mind and a flint-hearted drive to make a fast buck at the expense of anyone who might get in his way. Appropriately for a character whose general tactics in life are based around deceit and misrepresentation, he goes by the name of Phoney. Phoney Bone, for completeness.
Bone, as a series rather than as a character's surname, is what over-keen Disney DVD announcers like to call a "timeless classic". Written, drawn and lettered by Jeff Smith, it concerns three cousins of uncertain species who, having been run out of their home in Boneville, find themselves in a strange valley that's under siege from hairy monsters known as Rat Creatures. Joining forces with young Thorn Harvestar and her grandmother Rose Ben, the cousins join the struggle to rid the valley of the Rat Creatures once and for all. But a dark secret in Thorn's family, a conspiracy of dragons and the approaching threat of the evil Lord of the Locusts may mean that the Bone cousins won't be getting back home any time soon...
Of the three Bone creatures, Phoney is "the bad one". His cousins Fone and Smiley are "the hero" and "the comic relief" respectively, and Phoney exists primarily to create problems that the others have to deal with. He's not a nasty guy at heart, but he is greedy and deceitful, and adores creating situations where he can get one over on those with whom he doesn't get along, while hopefully turning a profit on it at the same time. It transpires that Phoney's election campaign for Mayor of Boneville was the reason why the cousins had to leave in the first place - he served some seriously past their prime prunes to attendees at one of his husting rallies; the aftermath was not something which the townspeople were prepared to accept, and nor was his continued presence in the town (there's more to it than that, but to say anything further on the subject would be to spoil one of the series' best reveals, so I'll hush up now).
His shtick is scamming - in the second volume of the Bone saga, a race is due to take place in Barrelhaven, the town at the centre of the valley. This happens every year, and is known as the Great Cow Race. Granma Ben, we're told, races cows, although it's not until later that we're filled in on the fact that she herself takes part and races them on foot and wins year after year. Phoney sees a way to make a bit of the ol' folding stuff out of this situation, though, by roping Smiley in as his stooge, setting up a betting book on the race's outcome, and spreading rumours about the "Mystery Cow" which is going to knock spots off Granma Ben on race day. The plan is that everyone will bet on this mystery cow, Granma wins as usual, and Phoney cleans up. Smiley acts the part of the Mystery Cow, dressed in threadbare pantomime livestock get-up, and it seems a done deal that he'll be beaten by Granma Ben. Unfortunately for Phoney, the landlord of the local pub, who also happens to be half of a mutual loathing society which also counts Phoney among its binary number, realises there's a scam on the go, and bets the pub on Granma to win. Suddenly everything changes. Granma Ben has to lose. Phoney decides to take matters into his own hands, gets inside the one-man cow suit with Smiley moments before the race begins, and... well, it's a first-rate sequence of comic comics, and should be required reading for all.
Part of the Bone story concerns Phoney's well-hidden brave heart, which is forced to reveal itself as the series goes on and the story darkens. He's not a man who turns to redemption easily, though, and it's no spoiler to say that he's not a man who renounces jerkdom at all. His grudging acceptance of the need for him to think of others beyond himself unfortunately disqualifies him from the race to be the biggest jerk in comics; heck, even at the beginning of the story he's no worse than Scrooge McDuck on a bad day, and he wouldn't even have made the top ten of jerks if he were pitted against the misanthropes of Marvel.
This whole post, in fact, hasn't been designed to make you think ill of Phoney at all. Rather, it's been designed to make you inclined to read Bone. With Bone, Jeff Smith has created something wonderful and unique - a story that can truly be appreciated and enjoyed by adults as much as by children. It has comedy, it has romance, it has terror, it has great set-pieces and rounded characters. It's available in a handy-dandy single volume of nigh-on 1400 pages, so if you don't feel like reading it on any given day you can always just bludgeon an ox to death with it from a standing start. Most importantly, it's the only place you can read about Phoney Bone. And that's no scam.
