"This day's experience, set in order, none of it left ragged or lying about, all of it gathered in like treasure and finished with, set aside." –Alice Munro, "What is Remembered"
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Well, folks, I’m almost to the end of my collection of paperbacks with cover art by Jeffrey Jones. Of course, I’m always on the lookout for books that I don’t have, but since I can’t afford to pay what many online booksellers want for old paperbacks, I generally have to hope that I will stumble upon what I want for cheap at a thrift store, rummage sale, small-town bookstore, or what have you…
Wish me luck!
A few months ago, I picked up a couple of “bales” of National Lampoon Magazine — thirty-two issues, in all — from a local bookseller for cheap. It was only when I got home with my bales and cut the strings that I found out that all but one of the issues were from the 1980s and 1990s, which was okay because, at the very least, it gave me quite a few terrific comic strips by M. K. Brown, R. Crumb, Shary Flenniken, Rick Geary, Buddy Hickerson, Mark Marek, Rodrigues, Gahan Wilson, et al., to read. The lone exception, however, was an issue from November 1975, which — o lucky me! — includes the second-last Idyl strip by Jeffrey Jones that ever appeared in the magazine.
Now, if all you’ve seen are reprints of Idyl, you might be interested to know that the strip first appeared in a newsprint section of the Lampoon called “Funny Pages” and that, in the November 1975 issue, all of the strips in the “Funny Pages,” including Idyl, were overprinted in light blue with only the word balloons left uncoloured. To give you an idea of the sombre, twilight mood that the blue colour lends to Jones’s strip — which begins with the words, “It’ll be dark soon” — I present to you the following scan:
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The effect is so appropriate to the theme of the strip that one can’t help but wonder if the art director didn’t choose the colour specifically to complement Jones’s work…
“Idyl was intended as satire and whimsy. One art director and one editor, who met me each month with puzzled faces, continued to remind me that National Lampoon was a humor magazine, ‘As long as YOU laugh,’ they finally said. So each month I would go in laughing. I also must admit that I love to draw nude women.”
— Jeffrey Jones, interview, 2001
RELATED LINKS:
More cover scans of books in my personal library:
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ABOVE: David Gerrold, When Harlie Was One (New York: Ballantine, 1972), with cover art by Jacques Wyrs.
Surprise, surprise, surprise… it’s another post featuring paperback covers scanned by me from my very own collection of disintegrating SF:
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More covers from the collection of yours truly:
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I’ve seen a few fantasy and SF paperbacks with covers by James Steranko on the shelves at local bookstores and thrift shops over the years, but I’ve rarely bothered to buy any. Here’s a scan of one that I did buy:
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I also found a copy of Steranko’s 1976 “visual novel” Chandler priced at $3.99 at the local Value Village, so I bought that, too, and scanned the cover for display:
Enjoy!
More crumbling paperbacks from the collection of yours truly, this time with cover art by an illustrator I know nothing about except that he definitely produced one of the following covers, the one that is uncredited but signed, and probably produced the other one, which is uncredited and unsigned — the signature has likely been cropped out — but which stylistic and contextual evidence suggests is also by him:
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The great comics artist, designer, editor, and publisher, Carmine Infantino, died earlier today at age 87.
In tribute to the master, I’ve assembled a small gallery of scans, displayed below, that includes several comic covers from the 1950s, pencilled by Infantino and finished by various inkers, including Sy Barry and Bob Lander, along with one cover from 1964, inked by Murphy Anderson, and a couple of pages of original art from Vampirella #59, inked by Alex Nino:
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“You know, the most important thing about my artwork: It never matured. Because just before it reached maturity, I stopped and became an editor. Because a good friend of mine once said to me, ‘Why don’t you ever talk about your artwork? Why don’t you have any around your apartment?’ And the answer is very simple: My artwork to me is like an unfinished symphony, a painting that has never been completely done, a baby that never was produced… You understand what I’m saying?”
— Carmine Infantino, in conversation with Gary Groth, The Comics Journal #191.
BONUS IMAGES (added 05 April 2013):
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RELATED LINKS HERE AT RCN:
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