2 out of 5

This intrigued me because I dig educational comics done in the style of the fantastic (to keep us lazy readers interested).  The opening credits page is fantastic (presented as newspaper blowing in the wind, closing up on a train window), and the following ‘setup’ page (‘Place:,’ ‘Time:’) equally fun, depicted by the bright, big-figured style of ‘Big Time Attic’, which consists of Zander Cannon, Kevin Cannon, and Shad Petosky, the Cannon brothers admittedly what brought the work to my attention.  The sideways comic book format is a little frightening when printed on cheap paper (dunno if the full book is printed like that or just this sampler), as it lends itself to easily ripped pages, but the full-length panels it allows look wonderful… although they’re only used in those opening pages.  So there’s that.

Otherwise, this book does nothing to convince me to read the main book, or to even make me curious to see more… which, in my opinion, should be the point of FCBD reads.  At the very least, if its a book that can stand on its own, it should ‘encourage’ me to seek out more comics.  But as ‘Bone Sharps’ isn’t a great example of the medium, it doesn’t do that, either.  The Big Time Attic art loses appeal over the rest of the pages, with talking heads discussing concepts which aren’t given any context and the figures too forcefully made to resemble the real-life counterparts from the ‘gilded age of paleontology’ on which Ottaviani is try to educate us, resulting in stiff and boring panels, womp womp.

Combine this with some examples of over-stylizing for the medium – P.T. Barnum’s text always fantastically flourished – and it results in a weird mish-mash of a few pages that might be involving with more setup or familiarity with the era, but as a sample completely underwhelms.  The bonus pages that show Big Time Attic’s methods are pretty cool, though, and do add to the feeling that the book is well-intentioned (and not highfalutin).  Plus, the preview of other Ottaviani books (I’m not familiar with the chap) makes it seem like he’s gotten some good praises for his other works in the same vein, so I would believe my criticisms are probably corrected in the full book.

Alas, since the preview is lame, I don’t have the desire to find out.