Thorn Proto-Bone Illustration by Jeff Smith featuring Thorn, Fone, Phoney, and The Great Red Dragon (via Kickstarter)

For those who don’t know the backstory, Cartoon Books announced an additional tier for their THORN: The Complete Proto-BONE College Strips Kickstarter near the end of the campaign (mid-November 2023). It featured the original art for the Trade Paperback cover, starring Fone and Thorn. Fellow art collector Kin Wong got there first but, for some strange reason, there were four more spots available at that tier. As I stared at this remarkable development, I said to myself “what the hell” and made the pledge. It was a bit of a risk since I had to give up my previous pledge for the smaller Thorn OA but I had faith in the Cartoon Books crew.

It turned out that Tom Gaadt, colorist and administrator for CB at the time, made a tiny mistake with the Kickstarter software and gave a quantity of 5 for the tier rather than 1. He contacted Jeff and they decided to do 4 more OA pieces which would feature Fone Bone & Thorn from the original TPB cover as well as two additional characters of the purchaser’s choice. This seemed like a great resolution to me and I chose my favorite two characters from the series: Phoney Bone and the Great Red Dragon.

In early April 2024, a group of finished OA pieces were posted to the Cartoon Books Instagram account showing six of the smaller Thorn drawings and one of the bigger pieces with Phoney and the Dragon. I asked Tom if this was mine and he said that it wasn’t. I didn’t want to change the characters so I asked him if he could have Jeff draw the Dragon shooting some fire toward Phoney so that it wasn’t a carbon copy of what he had just finished. Thankfully, Jeff honored the request and it came through beautifully!

The piece itself is about 8” by 10” and was drawn with blue pencil and ink. The Fone and Thorn may have been light-boxed since they’re very very similar to the OA but I did not get confirmation (only Jeff knows for sure). Everything else is original. Please take a look at the colored version with title in the additional images, which was done by the one and only Tom Gaadt as a commission. I’m very happy with how everything turned out so a huge thanks to Jeff & Tom and the rest of the Cartoon Books crew!