Jeff Smith (cartoonist)
Jeff Smith (born February 27, 1960) is an American cartoonist best known for Bone, a self-published comic book series. He was born in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Columbus, Ohio. He learned to draw from comic strips, comic books, and animation, inspired by Peanuts, Carl Barks, and The Pogo Special Birthday Special. The Pogo book he saw as a kid helped change how he thought about comics. He also cites Moby-Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings as major influences. He began drawing Bone as a child; the character Phoney Bone grew from one of his early doodles.
Smith graduated from Worthington High School in Ohio in 1978, attended Ohio State University (where he created a strip called Thorn) and studied animation. After college, he and Jim Kammerud started Character Builders, an animation studio in Columbus (1986–1992). He and his friends then launched Cartoon Books in 1991 to publish Bone, initially self-publishing all aspects of the book. His wife, Vijaya Iyer, later ran the business side, helping Bone reach a wider audience. Bone ran to 55 issues (1991–2004) and became a critical and commercial success. It has been collected in nine books in black and white, and later in color by Scholastic’s Graphix imprint. Time magazine called the 2004 one-volume collection “the best all-ages graphic novel yet published.”
Beyond Bone, Smith created Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil for DC Comics (2007 hardcover), designed a Pogo collection for Fantagraphics, and began RASL in 2008. His children’s book Little Mouse Gets Ready appeared in 2009 through Toon Books. In 2013 he started Tüki: Save the Humans, a webcomic about humanity’s first journey out of Africa; it began online in 2013 and print in 2014, with a hiatus in 2016 after a hand injury.
Smith has been active in supporting comics rights, serving on the board of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (2013–2018) and helping found Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, where he serves as artistic director. He lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife Vijaya Iyer.
He has received many awards, including ten Eisner Awards, eleven Harvey Awards, and two National Cartoonists Society Comic Books awards (1995–1996). In 2022, Tüki: Fight for Fire was named to the American Library Association’s Best Graphic Novels for Adults list. In August 2023, Smith suffered a cardiac arrest, which forced him to cancel the rest of his book tour.
Bone remains his signature work, followed by Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, RASL, and Tüki: Save the Humans.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 02:18 (CET).