"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"
Here’s another “treasure” from the library of yours truly. As far as I am aware, the painting on the cover of Devil Soul has not been reproduced in any form in any collection of the work of Jeffrey Jones published to date. Enjoy!
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As you can see, my copy of the novel is truly in excellent condition! It makes me happy just to know it is on my bookshelf. Is this what people mean when they talk about “pride of ownership”?
Earlier this week, I purchased a random selection of nine National Geographic magazines from 1967 and 1969 from a local thrift store. A few days later, as I was flipping through volume 135, number 4, from April 1969, I noticed an image by writer/photographer Malcolm S. Kirk that I knew I’d seen, in part, before. Here’s the comparison:
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I saw the painting Crescent Moon (a.k.a., Moon Nymph) by nineteenth-century Spanish painter and astronomy enthusiast Luis Ricardo Falero for the first time about an hour ago, when I read an article about Falero’s work that Ron Miller wrote for io9 and posted earlier today. And as is my wont, I immediately noticed a possible connection between one of Falero’s paintings and an SF illustration by one of my favourite artists, Jeffrey Jones, the promotion of whose work has been a frequent theme of my posts here at RCN (although not so much lately as it has been in the past):
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BONUS IMAGE (added 27 December 2013):
There were four books in the “Zanthar” series by Robert Moore Williams — Zanthar of the Many Worlds (1967), Zanthar at the Edge of Never (1968), Zanthar at Moon’s Madness (1968) and Zanthar at Trip’s End (1969) — but as far as I can determine, only the first, third, and fourth volumes had cover art by Jeffrey Jones. I’ve posted two of Jones’s “Zanthar” covers previously on RCN at a smaller size; now here are all three covers, re-scanned where necessary, and displayed in order of publication:
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I’ve posted some of these covers before, but I recently purchased some copies that, in a couple of instances, and for various reasons (like this, for example), are nicer than the books I scanned previously, so here I am to share with you:
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Bon appétit!
— THE GOLDEN AGE —
BONUS LINK:
After I posted the above link, the thought occurred to me that many of those illustrations by Jones are exactly the right proportion for bookmarks. So I used Irfanview to quickly assemble a panoramic image of five of the nicest family-friendly images, added some light grey guidelines so I could cut them out with a box cutter and a metal ruler, printed them off at the highest quality on a full sheet of glossy photo paper, carefully sliced along the guidelines, and basked in the glow of my very own Jones bookmarks.
Here’s my file for you to download and print some bookmarks for yourself, too. Give it a try! If you keep your expectations low, and you have a good printer and good photo paper at your disposal, you just might be pleasantly surprised how nice the bookmarks look when you’re done.
From the paperback collection of yours truly, here are two more classic Zebra/Kensington covers, with wrap-around art by Jeffrey Jones:
To view all of the Zebra/Kensington editions of Robert E. Howard’s books with Jones covers that I’ve posted so far, click here.
Below is a partial transcript of the above clip, with bold added for emphasis:
“Well, when Jeff did work for Warren, I wasn’t there [working for Warren] yet. I was, uhm, working in advertising promotion and, for another publisher, a magazine publisher in the city [New York]. Uhm, I think during this time Jeff may have discovered using reference? And it made a huge difference in his work. I remember at one point he, he, it suddenly occurred to him… okay, all right, back in the olden days there was a story that Frank Frazetta said that he never used reference and anybody who used reference was cheating. So a generation of young artists grew up thinking using reference is bad and cheating and this is, I don’t know, I don’t know why Frank did that because I know he used reference, I know he did. [Laughter.] Uhm, anyway, so I guess at one point Jeff just cracked and started using reference and his work got, it took a huge leap forward, so I do remember that, and I believe that was, maybe some of that might have been during the Warren period. Uhm, he just did a few things for Warren. He didn’t do that much.”
— Louise Simonson, Better Things Panel, San Diego Comic Con 2011
“My work looks the way it looks because I shoot reference.
I need that information, then I can play with it.” — Jeffrey Jones, in conversation with George Pratt
RELATED COMMENT:
BONUS SCAN:
From my very own library of brittle old paperbacks:
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To view all of the Zebra/Kensington editions of Robert E. Howard’s books with Jones covers that I’ve posted so far, click here.
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To view all of the books and magazines with cover art by Jeffrey Jones that I’ve posted so far, click here.
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