Jeffrey Catherine Jones was an enigmatic artist. Part of "The Studio", she was most famous at the time for her incredible paperback covers. Many are on par with the best of Frazetta. Her comics work was sporadic and most of it was not in the usual venues. Idyl, her most personal work appeared in the "Funny Pages" of National Lampoon, and was work not intended for the typical comic book buyer.
She's a bawdy Alice in Wonderland, if Alice was nude and mysteriously pregnant.
Above is the very first "Idyl" installment. It was first published in National Lampoon November 1975 in their first and very distinctive section called simply "Funny Pages".
Above is the final Idyl. It is marked by the singular panel and expansive thought balloon.
One had to be observant in those wilderness days of comics to find your favorite artist's work. In addition to National Lampoon, Jones had work appear in Swank magazine, one of Playboy's lesser imitators.
Some of that even more eccentric Jones material was gathered up in Ravens and Rainbows from Pacific Comics in 1981 and I only mention it for completion's sake. It is not included in this collection. We need another one for sure.
A few years after the National Lampoon gig, Jones found another home for his musings. In the pages of Heavy Metal he introduced the strip "I'm Age". Once again, we are treated to a single page filled with obscure musings.
His style has developed, away from his crunchy roots into a more relaxed look. He has said that the lush brush failed to connect with his hand and fingers in the same way that a pen did, so the change.I can't say I like it as well, but it sureain't bad. The messages of this series don't feel as opaque to me for whatever reason.
I'll mention this here just because I can, but I highly recommend Jeffrey Jones - The Definitive Reference from Vanguard. My only complaint is that to fit in all of the many Jones paperback covers and such, the images are postage-stamp size for the most part. If I ever thought of trying to collect all of these (and I have quite a few) I realize the futility of that effort. Still and all, an instructive and pleasurable tome.
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Fun(??) fact: the extremely zoftig model was artist Dan Green's wife.
ReplyDeleteThere's some huge reportage overdue -- I'm talking, like, a book; far more than a blog post -- on the greater Kingston, NY, comics creators mafia. This group included Jones, Green, Windsor-Smith, Starlin and Wrightson.
Sort of The Studio plus. I'd buy it.
DeleteA major talent. I was going to pull the trigger on the Vanguard book, but now I may not after your mention of the image sizes. What's the point of an art book if you need a magnifying glass to see the details? It's happened in other books, too and it drives my crazy.
ReplyDeleteI was a bit disappointed. They devoted two books to Frazetta but only one to Jones and that hurt.
DeleteAll of the Swank stories were reprinted (in black and white) by Fantagraphics in The Jones Touch comic. There is no other artist I know of who can create compositions that make so much empty space look so beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip on the Fantagraphics comic.
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