Some stories require more than one telling. I discover this every time I read a Pratchett book, or anything written by Gaiman. I'll be talking more about those two in the coming weeks, I think, because I am currently winding my way through their worlds again. 

Some stories seem complete when they're first told, but something draws you back, and in the re-telling you happen upon some detail you never found the first time, something that adds to the richness of the world you're traveling through. Some stories are told and you do a double-take at their ending. You pore over the story again, trying to wring every drop of meaning out of it, because you are not certain what the story made you feel. The path you thought you were on turns out to be very different, and only diving back into the story will help you traverse the terrain.

Written in the Bones, by Christopher Jones and Carey Pietsch, is one of the latter type of stories. It is a story that stays exact as long as is needed, and then leaves you chasing after it; I needed to re-read each page several times and the story complete several times to grasp what the creators have accomplished. This is not to say Bones is difficult, but that every panel is a story unto itself - a characteristic which more comics should strive for. At its simplest, Written in the Bones is about the relationship between dogs and humans told from the dogs' perspective. That simple description does not do the story enough justice, as the creators in a few short pages have caused me to re-examine the entire relationship between domestic pets and their 'owners'. Please read it, and share it with others. Stories like these deserve to be shared.

Thanks,

Philip