"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"
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:
[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
Keywords:Zanthar of the Many Worlds, Zanthar at Moon’s Madness, Zanthar at Trip’s End.
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:
[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
Bon appétit!
Keywords: The Guardians, The Killing Bone, Dark Ways to Death, The Haunting of Alan Mais, The Vampires of Finistere, Satan’s Child.
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.
The photo was taken by Jeffrey Jones, and I recognized the pose and lighting immediately! Very cool to see! To his credit, and to the great benefit of his painting, Jones didn’t succumb to the desire to spell everything out, to invent all of the forms that he couldn’t make out in his reference photo, but instead simply embraced the idea of lost edges.
If you are able, please contribute to Maria’s Indiegogo fundraiser for Better Things. Documentary films about illustrators and comics artists are few and far between, but if you want more, you need to step up and support the intrepid filmmakers who are willing to stride out on a limb and make it happen. The perks/rewards are cool, and because Maria has chosen to run a “Flexible Funding campaign,” all of the perks will be delivered even if the total money raised does not match the stated goal. In other words, if you contribute at the level to get the art book (for instance), you WILL receive the art book.
Compare those Tarzan dailies with Idyl, and I think you’ll be amazed at how much Jeffrey Jones in the 1970s styled his work in pen/brush and ink after the early comic-strip work of Hal Foster.
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
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