So Jeff Smith’s Bone is one of my favorite comics. It’s epic—the phone book-sized complete edition that I have weighs in at 1,332 pages, and it took Smith something like 13 years to complete—but it’s so clever and fun that it goes by in a blink. Funny, smart, and good-hearted, it’s the sort of utterly unique book that’s so well-conceived that it can do things no other book can (like pair up slapstick comedy with graceful allusions to Moby Dick). Kids love it, grownups love it, everybody loves it. It’s great. If you haven’t, read it.

And now: By way of the Hollywood Reporter comes news that Warner Bros. has snagged the rights to Bone, paving the way for a film adaptation. Which could go either way: According to the Reporter’s story, Nickelodeon fucked up previous attempts to adapt the book (“… partly because Smith was displeased that the studio was aiming it for kids and wanted the film to include pop songs”), so we’ll have to see if Warner Bros. has a better approach. If they’re finally able to recapture some of their old-school animation skills (like old-old-school, like Chuck Jones old-school), this thing could be a blast. If they can’t, Bone fans will be stuck wishing somebody else had snagged these rights. (Like, um, oh, I don’t know. Maybe somebody like, say… Pixar? Um, yes. Yes. That’d work.)

Via AICN.