Out from Boneville Ch5: Barrelhaven

PREVIOUSLY ...
Phoney Bone has wandered off, and the rat creatures attack the farm in the dead of night!

Synopsis
Chapter 5 begins with the rat creatures crowded around the farmhouse -- but Gran'ma Ben has a plan:
Run. 

More specifically, she tells Fone and Thorn to run while she fights off the rats. We also learn that she fought in the "Big War", at this point, presumably, the same one that Thorn has been flashing back to as a child. The two young 'uns run into the woods but there are too many rats, so much that Thorn is even worried for Gran'ma, so they try to go back and are soon surrounded.

Meanwhile, Phoney comes to Barrelhaven, a place we've already heard about but not seen. He reunites with Smiley, who is working off his bar tab for the tavern's owner Lucius, just in time to become likewise indebted to the apparently very angry man (thankfully, this is played for laughs).

Back in the forest, the Red Dragon does an Aslan and rescues Thorn and Fone Bone ... but when they return to the farm, the homestead is burning.

Locations
The new location for this chapter is the Barrelhaven Tavern, run by another major supporting character, Lucius Down. Let me just get this out of the way: Barrelhaven Tavern is utterly this series' "Prancing Pony". I especially like the looks the little Bone gets as he marches up to the bar. The other patrons already met Smiley, so just like Lucius their response is more like, "really, another one?". I had never thought of the parallel between Bones and Hobbits so much before but there you go.

For the rest of the issue, location is key for the action but otherwise not visually striking in the way say, the first time Fone looks out over the Valley in Chapter 1. The biggest sight along those lines would be at the end of the chapter. The reason why the last two issues gave us ample time to know the farm was exactly this: for Thorn's heroic journey this is her first major threshold and it is marked with the same "burning home" motif as Star Wars and countless Japanese RPGs.

Characters
Fone Bone
I thought that our meek, though plucky, hero's greatest moment came when Thorn "accidentally" uses him as a cosh to take out one of the pursuing rat creatures. Other than his ecstatic (and slightly premature) celebration for the dragon saving them from the rats, Fone is mostly just along for the ride in this chapter. And that's fine, because we spend a good long chunk of the issue with his cousins instead.

Phoney and Smiley
Ah Smiley, you happy-go-lucky, probably lung-cancer-having, fun-loving sneak. It's good to have you back in the story, and before the next book too. Together, the abrasive Phoney and the (slightly) more appealing Smiley hatch a plan to rig the Cow Race, giving us a glimpse at what might happen in the next story. As for this story, it began with the Bone cousins separated: so if anything was an indicator that we're about to shift the plot from "gotta get home" to something grander, it would be that all three of them have reasons to stay in the Valley longer than they had anticipated.

Whilst Phoney is certainly anxious to return to Boneville (perplexingly, as his cousins remind him, given how the other citizens ran them out of town to begin with), he also wants to earn a little on the side -- through unjust means, as he is constantly wont to do. Fone is pursuing Thorn, at least in his mind, and is currently running terrified through the woods, and even Smiley couldn't have left earlier if he wanted to thanks to his misunderstanding over beer credit with Lucius (though again, knowing Smiley at this point we suspect he doesn't mind at all, being quite used to having no worth to his name, whether money or barter).

As for Lucius, well I'm happy to say his character is no bit-part. But that would be talking spoilers ...

Pros and cons
Not much to complain about at all in this chapter: the one con below aside, the series is going strong and getting more and more interesting as book 1 comes to a close. One thing that re-reading this series has had me thinking (also by starting Amulet, another Scholastic comic) is how flexible the pace of an adventure comic can be: until Chapters 4 and 5, there had been so much character introduction, world building and mystery in each chapter that they seemed to have entire mini-arcs of their own.

In Chapter 5, though, the audience realises that this story is so much bigger than a few twenty-page adventures, because here is not a stand-alone adventure but a single bridging sequence (with interlude) between a killer cliffhanger in Chapter 4 and a big change for all the characters in Chapter 6 -- especially for Thorn and Gran'ma, but not forgetting that the Bone cousins' reunion is being set up sooner rather than later.

This flexibility can be contrasted with analogous cartoons on television like say, Avatar: TLA, whose adventures always have to have some sort of resolution at 11 or 22 minutes, and basically need at least one fight scene or it doesn't feel like a real "episode". True, there are exceptions everywhere, but in general one can see that cartoons are more structurally formulaic than comic books with similar story content.

The one con I felt in Chapter 5 is the lack of pay-off to the presence of Phoney during the first Kingdok scene in the previous chapter. I highlighted the suspenseful atmosphere of those few pages in the recap and was looking forward to seeing a reaction that I clearly thought I remembered, though now I realise it never took place. To be fair, the choice to omit an immediate response to Phoney's fear is an effective choice. Like the glazing over of the two-month gap between chapters 1 and 2, or like countless heroic fantasy stories that (while having a larger ensemble cast) still have to focus on the central hero, there are some creative reactions and conversations between side characters that just take up space in the story and we readers ultimately do better without.

Taking the example of this chapter, what we actually did get between Phoney and Smiley is far more entertaining than the dramatic and comedic consequences I was envisioning.

This week's lesson
I tossed up between two main take-aways for this issue -- the other being the lesson under the "Con" heading about picking your battles when it comes to what scenes we get between secondary characters.

In the end, I chose one that may seem more mundane but it is very important to remember, no matter what medium you are working in: that is, for adventure serials of all kinds you have to be able to take a breather.

Chapter 5 has three main scenes, two of which fit into the same action sequence. If the entire issue were that one action sequence, it would risk being either too stressful or too tedious for the length of the chapter -- and what's more, for the epic fantasy fans, it also risks taking on a lightweight appearance as it would be mostly wordless, sandwiched between two much more story-heavy chapters.

Instead, we break at the most effective cliffhanger when all hope seems lost for Fone and Thorn. The story changes gears completely as Phoney enters Barrelhaven, and the comedy and character development here lets the tension build silently in the background before the story returns to the forest.

This technique of cutting away from one action thread to a different kind of thread is used so often that it requires almost no more exploration; except to say that if you limit your perspective to a single character in a work, you are relinquishing this helpful tool, and will have to rely upon other means of breaking up the action -- for example, chapter breaks (see Harry Potter).

Now all is said and done, all aboard the hype train because the next chapter ends Out from Boneville; in other words, it's the end of the beginning with even grander adventures in the offing.