Cartoonist Jeff Smith, the creator of the award-winning BONE comic book series, often says that he has his ideal job: he is living his childhood dream of being a cartoonist while indulging his own fantasies for adventure through the characters he has created. As a boy, Smith was inspired by reading Peanuts, Uncle Scrooge, and the now-defunct comic strip Pogo by the late Walt Kelly. In his teenage years, he admired the politically savvy Doonesbury. Smith once said that he "always wished that my childhood cartoon heroes would go out on an adventure that had actual danger in it . . . or an adventure that would have consequences that might actually alter their existence."

Now that he is an adult and is creating his own comics, Smith has his characters doing exactly that. Smith once irreverently said that BONE, his signature creation, is a "postmodern, neo-retro, deconstructed docu-dramedy . . . fat packed...