Oh YEAH. And therein lies a story!
Scholastic saw Bone's numbers in the comic shop market, and decided to help it vault that distribution bottleneck. They republished it as a Scholastic book (and in color) and sold it at their fairs/etc., and it did MONUMENTALLY WELL.
SO WELL, in fact, it gave Scholastic (and other publishers) a pretty distorted view of how well EVERY comic they might publish could potentially sell, at the time!
(Modern superstars like Dog Man, R. Telgemeier books, etc now meet those expectations, but still, at the time? no.)
(Modern superstars like Dog Man, R. Telgemeier books, etc now meet those expectations, but still, at the time? no.)
SO there was a frenzy of acquisitions, new series, and marketing, specifically for the young reader market. And kids may not have initially snapped it all up with the fervor they had for Bone, but they sure do now; I wouldn't be shocked if Bone's since been eclipsed.
That's why the NA young reader market for comics is so ridiculously huge today, why Telgemeier's book spent literally YEARS on NYT bestseller lists, why Random House is getting in on the action, why so many comic pubs are founding young reader imprints now, etc.
Bone was the foundation for ALL of that.
It's hard to even imagine now, but there was a time when "all-ages"/kid's comics were VERY thin on the ground. Cape pubs couldn't be bothered, and most small presses focused on adults. There was no "gateway drug."
It's hard to even imagine now, but there was a time when "all-ages"/kid's comics were VERY thin on the ground. Cape pubs couldn't be bothered, and most small presses focused on adults. There was no "gateway drug."
Adult comics readers (mostly) come from kid comic readers, and (almost) no one was making anything for kids. Everyone knew it was a bad idea, but no one had the money, means or motivation to fix it until Scholastic grabbed Bone.
