Jeff Smith "Bone and Beyond"

Based in Columbus, Jeff Smith is one of the country's most acclaimed and influential comic book artist/writers, best known for the epic graphic novel Bone.

In 2005, Time magazine called Bone, which Smith wrote and drew, one of the 10 greatest graphic novels of all-time. This exhibition—a partnership between the Wexner Center and Ohio State University's Cartoon Research Library—will include approximately 75 original drawings: primarily original black-and-white pages from Bone, with a smaller selection of full-color Bone covers and post-Bone work, including original drawings from Smith's recent Shazam series for DC Comics and from Rasl (forthcoming), a time-travel story.

The exhibition will also include a selection of original comics whose artists Smith cites as direct influences, among them examples from Walt Kelly's Pogo, Will Eisner's The Spirit, George Herriman's Krazy Kat, Charles Schulz's Peanuts, Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury, and E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre. The exhibition is organized by Lucy Shelton Caswell, professor and curator of Ohio State's Cartoon Research Library, and David Filipi, the Wexner Center's curator of film and video. The catalogue features an introduction by Caswell, and essays by Filipi, Sandman creator Neil Gaiman, and cartoonist and scholar Scott McCloud.