Bone Volume one, Out From Boneville by Jeff Smith feels like a long set up to something cool, but it stumbles a little bit to get going. The jokes made me chuckle, especially the possum joke about them being good at playing dead and scaring them to death is playing. I thought the drawing and humor was a mash up Looney Toons meets Ren and Stimpy.

The plot: is three cousins are kicked out of Boneville, Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone. and are in a desert like landscape and lost. The brother’s become separated, we follow Fone Bone as he tries to find them. He meets a lot of creatures and humans along the way, some friends and some foes.

Things that I Liked: The drawing of the Rat Creatures is really good, the colors used for darkness are spectacular. The jokes when they land are good. There’s only dialogue bubble no thought bubbles I found this refreshing. There’s a lot of sexual jokes that are clever and will go over most young readers heads.

Things that I Did Not Like: There’s an awful lot of filler, some is okay but there’s a lot that takes away from the story. The story looks like it’s going somewhere at the end of this book. Out of the Bones’s I only liked Fone Bone didn’t care for the other two characters.

I would recommend this to people clamoring for classic comedic comics, anytime you see a character smoking a fat stogie I think of Looney Toons or Dumbo. The art and coloring is really good! I read this to see if it was appropriate to give to my 11 year old cousin, and it seems appropriate.  I rated this book 3 out of 5 stars.