The following was published in my most recent zine. I've actually cut & pasted it from the original draft, so I apologize for any typos or spelling errors.

Cerebus (Dave Sim) and Bone (Jeff Smith) –I’m sure that there are fans of both these gentlemen who eagerly await each and every issue of their respective titles. I have to admit that at one time you could certainly have counted me among them. However, as it stands now it's more a matter of habit than interest that keeps me picking up each issue. Also, as both titles are nearing the end of the runs I still want to see where their creators are taking the characters.

Oh sure, we all know that Cerebus is going to die (alone and on mourned, we have been led to believe), but we are not so sure where the fates of the Bones shall lead them.

In the case of Dave Sim and his book, I have actually been finding it chore for the past half dozen issues, as Sim's Woody Allen stand-in takes dictation from Cerebus on the earth pig's interpretation of the Bible.

No doubt there are folks who are riveted by Sim's anti-feminist ranting, but I'm certainly not among them. It was easy to ignore his, provocative and misogynist spouting for the past few years, as there were enough other things going on, plus Dave kept his speeches at the back of the book and you could ignore them, if you saw fit. The current story line does little but produce page after page of bile and I really don't care what Sim thinks about Canadian politics, feminism or Islam.

Get on with it, for Pete's sake! If you don't have anything to say with you character (besides using him as a mouthpiece for your own theories) kill the book and just admit that you ran out of ideas years ago. You painted yourself into a corner by declaring early on that you had 300 issues of story, but found that you ran out around 100 issues short. Even at 250, you could have ended it, as you joked in the book, and I really don't think more than a half dozen folks would have cared.

Naturally, the guys over at the COMICS JOURNAL would have had a field day, but you claim not to care what they have to say anyway!

Sadly, I pick up each issue and find that after I've read everything else in my bi-weekly shopping I still hesitate to skim the book. I can't wait until 300,when all of us can R.I.P.

It's not quite so bad with Jeff Smith's BONE. Smith still tries to make the adventures of his characters interesting and he seems to actually care about them. The problem is that I no longer do!

The book seems to have fallen into the trap of
a lot of fantasy tales. Once you set your characters out on their journey, how do you maintain interest until they finally arrive. Apparently, Smith hasn't figured it out and worse yet his characters, for the most part, seem not to have changed or grown since their journey began.

Oddly, it seems that only Smiley Bone (initially little more than comic relief) has added any depth to his character. While still playing second banana to Phoney, it is Smiley who demonstrates he has learned from what has happened, becoming wiser and better for it. Phoney, more so than any other character seems to be actually dim-witted, since he continues to motivated totally by greed, even when his own life is in danger. Having been saved by the intervention of just about every other major character, at one point or other, you have to wonder why any of them (Smiley included) wouldn't just want to let him finally pay the price for his stupidity. While Fone, the title character, has become bitter and lost almost any sense of the warm-hearted creature to which we were first introduced.

The book, as with CEREBUS, just isn't fun to read anymore. I enjoy Smith's art and still find that some of his writing shows the skill that drew me initially into the book.