An interview with J. Bone
By Owen K. Craig
“It started out as a birthday invitation,” J. Bone explains, “I drew a space guy and loved how he looked.” That was the beginning of Jett Vector, J. Bone’s new character who will star in his own series, currently seeking distribution. “I want it to be a light, fun, gay com
ic that a teen can pick up and not be embarrassed by it. As a kid I would pick up He-Man or Neil Adams’ Batman and find things before you’re ready to express what you want to see. I want to have a gay-friendly, discovery-friendly book.”
As he explains his concept, J. Bone’s passion for the character and drive behind the project become clear. He’s excited to talk about it. His eyes light up as he talks about how he came up with various plot points and how these plots all come from his perception of the world as a gay man: “I keep seeing guys I believe are gay, but they talk about their wives and I scratch my head. So I took that and I put Jett Vector on this planet of all women where they have kidnapped men and forced the men to live among them.” He laughs as he explains the concept, “Jett’s co-pilot is one of the kidnapped men and Jett has to foil the plan.”
J. Bone has his share of famous friends he can call upon to get help with his projects (at one point he worked heavily with Darwyn Cooke), but this time the project is so personal that he wants to work on it himself. “Originally I called in B. Clay Moore and asked him to help with the writing. We worked out a loose plot and an opening scene. But then I realized that I wanted to do it on my own. I talked to Clay and he was okay with it, but I still did some drawings of his character Hawaiian Dick as a sort of quid pro quo. You know, to make things even-steven.”
After being briefly distracted discussing how great Arrested Development was, J. Bone wrapped it up with some final selling points about Jett Vector: “I love 50’s cheesecake. I’ve got a spaceship of female pirates, a villain with a mail-order groom business, all that great stuff, but in a discovery-friendly comic book.”
