Heavenly creatures

Throughout "Bone," Smith demonstrates a graceful command of unappreciated comic-book styles. The early issues include scary chases as dynamic as anything drawn by action-obsessed artists like Frank Miller (of "The Dark Knight"), but prove essentially comic and sunny. Smith's sharp characterizations and clean drawing style reflects his love of the "Pogo" and "Peanuts" strips and especially Barks' "Donald Duck" tales, which took the Donald and his zillionaire uncle, Scrooge McDuck, on adventurous treasure hunts in exotic locales. Even the name Fone Bone pays homage to the late Don Martin, penciler of Mad magazine's most outlandishly elastic cartoons.

"Bone" began as a fantastical, freewheeling romp -- one of the first extended story lines depicted "The Great Cow Race" -- but it gradually yet seamlessly turned into a dark, sprawling fantasy epic. Recent issues have found the Bones on the wrong end of a massive siege akin to the Helm's Deep sequence of "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers." The Bones and Thorn learn that she's not only the heir to a fallen kingdom, but possibly the decisive figure in an apocalyptic battle between good and evil. In Tolkien terms, she's like Frodo and Aragorn wrapped up in one.

"Bone" is also more sophisticated than it first appears. In the story arc "Rock Jaw: Master of the Eastern Border," Smiley and Fone Bone protect a bunch of cute woodland creatures from the title character, who resembles a big cat from Disney's animated "Jungle Book." Yet Rock Jaw has not just wicked claws, but also a Manichean worldview that sets off a debate over the purpose of life -- in between bona fide cliffhangers. In the "Ghost Circles" story line, evil magic turned the lush valley into a blasted wasteland, against which the Bone cousins' capacity for loyalty and humor provide the only human element.

Even when Smith pours on the mystical hoodoo a little thick, the funny but multifaceted characters keep the tale on a solid footing. More than any other current comic title, "Bone" deserves -- and could support -- the kind of popular attention that elevated Harry Potter from the rank and file of children's books. "Cerebus," on the other hand, will never be more than a cult success, since it's such an iconoclastic project -- not just in comics, but in all of mass media -- that it defies categorization. Call it "satire" by default. Dave Sim began the book in 1977 as a spoof of "Conan the Barbarian" comics that replaced the longhaired muscleman with a 3-foot, sword-swinging, talking aardvark. "Cerebus" initially made hay from the incongruity of a deadpan, self-centered "earth-pig" playing the macho hero.

But Sim had bigger ambitions for the book than anyone could imagine, and by 1979 had announced, at the age of 23, that "Cerebus" would be a self-contained story of 300 issues -- the "War and Peace" of comic books. Sim parodied modern politics by taking Cerebus from mercenary to diplomat to, in the 25-issue "novel" "High Society," the elected prime minister of a fictitious, preindustrial nation (that bears a passing resemblance to Sim's native Canada). The subsequent book "Church and State" ran twice as long (about 1,100 pages) to illustrate the abuse of religious authority as Cerebus became pope of a Catholic-style church. By the end of "Church and State," a character prophesied that in the final issue, the eponymous aardvark would "die alone, unmourned and unloved."

The artist known as Gerhard designs the book's intricate backgrounds (which look far more solid and tangible than most comic drawings) while Sim scripts the book and draws the characters. "Cerebus" shows the talent and vision to rival any of the stars of the current comic books scene, including Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. As a restless, anything-goes stylist, Sim proves equal parts theatrical stage manager, cinematic cameraman and comedy-club impressionist. Recurring characters include ersatz versions of Groucho Marx, Mick Jagger and the Three Stooges, reinterpreted for Cerebus' milieu but with their vocal and visual traits captured with hilarious accuracy. Sim has also offered poignant, realistic portraits of late-career F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Oscar Wilde. The 11-issue "short story" "Melmoth" juxtaposes a near-catatonic Cerebus killing time in a café with an accurate account of Wilde's last days that works as a kind of historical biography in pictures.

For literally decades, Sim's aardvark has shown a classic comedian's gift for slapstick and the slow burn. Yet "Cerebus" proves its most moving generally at the end of its extended story lines, when Cerebus receives some kind of enlightenment instead of worldly power or romantic attachment. The "earth-pig" ultimately proves more tragic than comic: No matter how many epiphanies he has, he can never significantly change his brutal, selfish nature. As a violent, charismatic and funny antihero whose pursuit of power never provides peace of mind, Cerebus resembles few other characters in contemporary pop culture so much as Tony Soprano.

Next Page: Sim has proven that you CAN self-publish a comic series for 27 years, but not necessarily that you SHOULD

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