4 out of 5

What should a good spin-off series do?  In my eyes, it should welcome new readers but reward old ones and it should offer something different from the regular series – a reason it wasn’t part of the original run.  ‘Tall Tales’ – a collection of the ‘Stupid Rat Tails’ plus linking materials in the beautiful Scholastic reprint format – does all of those things rather well.  Although its initially disappointing to have someone else on scripting duty, Sniegoski (also trusted with the ‘Quest for the Spark’ prose books) obviously has a grasp on the characters and the Bone world, and so nothing seems off beat in his writing.  Besides a bit more reliance on external cues for jokes instead of visual ones (which could be seen as a general difference between one writer / artist approach and different writer / artist approach), making some his gags a bit on the hammy side over the sort of ‘classic’ cartoon style of Jeff’s jokes, it still feels like a Bone book.  Which is all the more impressive since most of these are new characters.

So We’re back in Boneville, and Smiley Bone and his rat creature companion are leading a trio of young Boy Scout types into the woods, Smiley as Scout leader.  They make a fire, and we commence with some tale tellin’.  Tall Tales, mostly.  Get th’ drift?  All featuring ‘Big Johnson Bone’ as the prototypical Bone Tall Tale hero.  We get a trio of stories leading Johnson up to adulthood, where we learn of his immense strength and capacity to put away food, and then the last half of the book is taken up by a several part story that gives nods to the original Bone series both indirectly – it begins with Big Johnson Bone getting kicked out of town – and directly.  The direct reference is the most fun one, because it gives us a reason for a detail in the Bone books.  Unlike the ‘Rose’ prequel, which fleshed out information in a way that didn’t really enrich its presence in the main saga, this detail carried over from ‘Tall Tales’ could’ve been seen as a throwaway deet, so its fun that someone (Smith, Sniegoski) latched onto it and gave us a reason that doesn’t feel forced.

The main appeal here – sorry, Tom – is that Jeff gets to flex his comedic muscles.  There were plenty of jokes in Bone, but the series had a fair amount of emotion to carry as well, as opposed to Tall Tales which is all anthromorphs and Looney Tunes gags.  Maybe there’s one too many vomit / fart joke, but still, Smith has a great visual sense of combining the ridiculous with the readable, so you feel like you can absorb every detail and yet not feel weighed down by it.  Again, part of the divide between writer and artist does pop up, since some reactions don’t seem exactly in line with what’s being said, but it’s generally off to the side and not a distraction (or a frequent occurrence).

You could start here, but know that Bone proper is much more serious.  I see this book as a reward to those who experienced the whole saga, giving us a bit more of some undoubtedly favorite characters – Smiley and Bart – while giving Smith a chance to rest his thinkin’ cap and draw up a storm while Sniegoski does good on keeping the writing light but totally worthwhile.