New York Times bestselling graphic novelist Jeff Smith, creator of “Bone” and “RASL,” stopped by the Sedona Public Library on April 26 as part of his “Dawn of Man” Route 66 tour to promote his new series “TUKI.”

Smith said that Route 66 is a part of every American’s imagination and that he saw the release of “TUKI” as a reason to answer the call to adventure across the country.

Technology has substantially altered the comic industry since Smith first produced “Bone” over 30 years ago. As Smith has always preferred to follow his own path, he elected to self-publish his second major project, “RASL,” and to use the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to finance “TUKI.”

“We’ve had to adapt so much,” Smith said when discussing the use of Kickstarter. “It’s not that [technology] has made it easier to work in the comics industry. But it’s a more direct connection with our readers and our customers. Our sales tripled compared to what we probably would have gotten through more traditional distribution systems.”

Smith reflected on the parallels between the role technology plays in his publishing career and the role it plays in the plot of “TUKI,” which “follows the misadventures of a small band of early humans who controlled fire in an epoch when gods and giants were real, and fire was taboo.”

The Dawn of a Man 

“TUKI” was inspired by Smith’s lifelong questions about humanity’s origins. Watching nature specials about evolution as a child with his father, trips to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History to experience the dioramas of Homo erectus and the 1974 discovery of the 3.2- million-year-old fossils of Australopithecus afarensis all influenced his fascination with prehistory.

“It was such a big deal,” Smith said. “It was on the cover of ‘Life’ magazine and ‘National Geographic,’ and I was hooked and had to immediately share it with my father. Just that question of ‘Where did we come from?’ If you’re going to get an answer to it, it’s going to be going down the rabbit hole of evolution.”

By the mid-1970s Smith had developed an interest in pulps such as “Tarzan” and “Conan the Barbarian,” and it was his love of the cover art by Frank Frazetta that pulled him into that world of beautiful women, monsters and danger.

1977 was an especially formative year for Smith, with the release of “Star Wars, which he saw five times in the theatre. His first reading of “The Lord of the Rings,” that summer before his senior year of high school. Perhaps more importantly for Smith  the artists  Moebius, Druillet, Dionnet and Farkas debuted the magazine “Heavy Metal” that year.

“That’s where ‘Bone’ comes from, if you take all those elements and put them together with Frank Frazetta,” Smith said. “I’m living the dream.”

Smith attributed the storytelling structure of “Bone” to the influence of Art Spiegelman’s seminal work “Maus,” in which Spiegelman shared his father’s experiences of the Holocaust. Spiegleman’s metaphor of Nazis as cats and the Jewish people as mice “was genius,” Smith said, and gave the reader a more abstract opportunity to process the horrors of genocide.

“It had a beginning and a middle and an end,” Smith said. “Comics don’t do that. Spider-Man

is still a teenager, Batman is still 35. They just don’t change. But this was a book with a spine and a story and that was a wakeup call for me.”

Smith sees storytelling as a bridge between fantasy and the scientific realm of paleoanthropology.

“The oldest epics in Western literature, the ‘Iliad’ or ‘Gilgamesh’ … they’re about real people and events like the Trojan War,” Smith said. “Yet, the whole time the gods are messing with the humans. That kind of storytelling is what I was trying to do with ‘TUKI.’”

“TUKI” is intended to transport the reader to a realistic setting in East Africa millions of years ago. Smith said he wanted to layer anthropology with elements from mystical fantasy as found in Homer’s “Odyssey” to portray a scenario in which different species of hominids coexisted and examined their inner lives.

The Library Lift

Smith attributed both his own success and the wider success of the graphic novel medium directly to libraries. When he and his wife were self publishing “Bone” in paperback, it was demand from librarians that led to his publishing deal with Scholastic in 2005, which is considered one of the catalysts of the modern comics boom.

“Around [the year] 2000, librarians started carrying ‘Bone’ and other graphic novels,” Smith said. “And even people who were reluctant readers could pick up these books. But it was when Scholastic called my wife and I to launch a graphic novel imprint for young adults that things really began to change, not just for us but for the whole comics landscape. But the best part is that we were followed by [artists such as] Raina Telgemeier. It’s been quite a strange ride, one I never expected.”

An obstacle to Smith’s success in libraries was the fact that “Bone” was among the first and most heavily challenged graphic novels. The 2014 State of America’s Libraries Report listed it as the 10th most challenged book that year for reasons of “violence, racism and political viewpoint.” The children’s comic “Captain Underpants” took the No. 1 spot.

“There are a lot of people [who are not] not satisfied with choosing not to participate in something or just not letting their children see something,” Smith said. “They want to keep everyone’s children from seeing whatever it is that they don’t approve of, and that’s not American, that’s the opposite [of American].”

Smith attributes much of the graphic novel backlash to the medium being visual, which lends itself to people giving the illustrations a passing glance and taking images out of context.

“People who want to ban books are not the good guys,” Smith said. 

At this time, there have not been any challenges to materials at the Sedona Public Library according to Library Director Judy Poe, who added, “I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Librarians are on the front lines when it comes to free speech,” Smith said. “Nationally they’re often under attack, which annoys me to no end. But I love librarians and how they’ve embraced comics. They fight for the First Amendment, and they love kids and their public.”

Smith’s visit was part of the Sedona Public Library’s “Library Giving Day,” a fundraising push to enable several major infrastructure improvements to the building.

“TUKI” is planned as a six-volume series, with the next installment tentatively scheduled for a mid-2024 release.