Idyl Day!

Catherine Jeffrey Jones was born on this date in 1944. Jones was a seminal paperback artist in the 1960's and 1970's. She worked in comics some at DC and elsewhere, but it did not seem to be her primary focus.  Jones created the comic strip Idyll. I know it was featured only a short time ago at the Dojo, but it's really the only choice.  

(Berni Wrightson, Catherine Jeffrey Jones, Mike Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith - 1978)

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. Frazetta has said that Jones was his favorite artist. 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. 

(Dave Sim from Glamourpuss)

It was in the pages of National Lampoon that I first fell in love with Idyl. She was an alluring and exceedingly naked woman who mused about life and death and such stuff. She lived in a strange world in inhabited by talking animals. 

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. 

 

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The Definitive Idyl And I'm Age!

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. 

It was in the pages of National Lampoon that I first fell in love with Idyl. She was a lovely naked woman who mused about life and death and such stuff. She lived in a strange world in inhabited by talking animals. 

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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December!

The barbarian welcomes you to the bleak month of December. The year of 2024 has been a memorable one to this point for all the wrong reasons. I want to right the ship and give us all something to smile about. That Neal Adams illustration of Robert E. Howard's famous Cimmerian is a tip off. It's nearly all barbaric action this month -- fantasy with a finishing blow.  

In the somewhat warmer climes of Narnia, we reach the end of that delightful children's saga by C.S. Lewis. For Lewis this all leads to a dramatic final battle which is good news for many of us. 

Frank Frazetta gets represented a few times this month. One is with Thun'da, the one comic book that the great artist illustrated all the way through. That's on tap as well as more recent sequel by other talents. 

Idyl by the late Catherine Jeffrey Jones is poetry. I don't pretend to understand it all, but revisiting these supremely crafted pages which originally appeared in National Lampoon are always intriguing and in the end heart-warming. There are other things from Jones as well such as I'm Age from Heavy Metal. 

And speaking of heart-warming, one needs look no further than Peter Beagle's magnificent and elegant The Last Unicorn. A striking mythology for a modern time sorely in need of it. 

It's the allure of more ancient myths which attract the reader to Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword. This magnificent saga was first published in the same year as Tolkien's great yarn about Hobbits, and some hold it higher regard. 

No wants to see Groo the Wanderer. He's a mental deficient who poses a threat to all those who come in contact with him. He blithely wanders (hence the name) through life creating havoc not only for villains, but heroes and bystanders as well. He's a barbarian they can't kill -- no matter how hard they try. I take a glance at one of the sturdiest barbarians in comics. 

One of my favorite Marvel yarns is when the Hulk got shrunk and found love and courage in a strange sub-atomic world. This turned into a downright saga. I was a downright Hulkamaniac back in the day, and this one always stood proud among the many tales about old Jade Jaws. 

And speaking of shrinking, the master of being little -- The Atom found himself having to retool to survive when he's stranded in a tiny world for a time. He finds adventure and romance in the smallest kingdom on the planet. 

The Viking Prince featured the astounding artwork of Joe Kubert, who caught the feel of the bygone age with a deft but firm touch. These tales are vivid when often comics of the time were quite timid. 

Kubert supplied the covers for DC's Nightmaster stories in Showcase, but it was left to an up-and-coming Berni Wrightson to draw the story. 

But Nightmaster was just DC sticking its collective toe into the Sword and Sorcery genre. In 1975 they took a deep dive when they cobbled together their "Adventure Line" which was filled with vintage crimefighting, prehistoric tales of survival, and scuds of swords and oodles of sorcery. I want to take a look at each of the comics that DC launched in this campaign, and I want to do it in the order they pictured above beginning with The Avenger and Justice Inc and sliding right all the way to Kong. 

This should be a ton of fun and is a project I've been thinking about for quite a while. I just needed a few comics to make it happen and now I have them. 

And I haven't forgotten about Neal Adams who kicked off this introductory post. He'll be popping up here and there as the final month of 2024 tumbles along to its inevitable conclusion. 

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The Complete Web Of Horror!

I was a bit too young to enjoy thoroughly the horror comic magazines of the early 70's. When Marvel pushed into the zone with Monsters Unleashed and Dracula Lives, I began to notice them. I'd bought a random issue of Eerie, but I never got them as a regular thing. So Web of Horror was totally off my charts in 1969 when it debuted. I've long been fascinated by the short-lived magazine, mostly because of the outstanding talent associated with. I like everyone else am a Berni Wrightson fan and guys of like Mike Kaluta and Frank Brunner always get my attention. I was less plugged into Jeff Jones, but, I liked all the work by him I encountered. He came into focus when The Studio was set up with Jones joining Kaluta, Wrightson and Barry Windsor-Smith in attempts to market portfolios and such. 

When Fantagraphics announced they were going to at long last publish a reprint of the series I was immensely pleased and pre-ordered a copy as soon as I was able to do so. Now I have it my clutches to help celebrate Halloween. 

Terry Bisson, Clark Dimond, and Dana Marie Andra all write essays explaining how Web of Horror came to be. His boss Robert Sproul, the guy behind Cracked magazine, was the guy with the deep pockets and so he was the guy Bisson and Dimond approached about a magazine in the Warren magazine vein. Bisson already worked for Sproul. Bission had connections to the young artists filling the pages of fanzines at the time. So, he corralled Wrightson, Kaluta, Reese, along with Frank Brunner, Wayne Howard, the painfully underrated Bruce Jones, and veterans such as Syd Shore and Otto Binder to fashion just such a magazine. 

With writers such as Nicola Cuti tapped to join in, these young turks set about making some tasty monster mags. I'm particularly impressed by Ralph Reese, who brings a hard edge to his fantasy yarns. Wrightson of course is tapping into that classic Ghastly and EC vein he is famous for and Kaluta offered up some dreamy fantasy images. Jeff Jones was brought in for some awesome covers. (He did issues one and two and Wrightson did issues three and the unfortunate four.) Wayne Howard is a fave and his story kicks off the first issue, but alas it's his only contribution. (His second was never published.) The Brothers Ussher by Dimond and artist Donald Norman is set up to be a continuing saga, but it has only one installment. 

The title only lasted three issues. And that's largely because some of its critical benefactors abandoned it. Brisson admits to a severe lack of professionalism when he just dropped out and headed west to find a commune. The artists tried to pick up the pieces, but those pieces were scattered here and yon. Frank Brunner rescued some already submitted artwork scheduled for the fourth issue which never came to be, mostly because Sproul himself ducked out to Florida.  Many of those abandoned but finished stories showed up in other black and white magazine, one I remember reading in a Marvel magazine. 

This handsome volume has all the published issues, the unpublished fourth issue and even a story eventually published in For Monsters Only. To be able to behold and enjoy all these lush stories by the likes of Wrightson and Kaluta and others is a grand treat, especially knowing that all too many of these creators have passed on. I do have one small bicker and that's that the bio for Nicola Cuti made no mention of his co-creation E-Man, my favorite superhero, but that's a small oversight. This volume is well and truly time capsule full of treasure from an era when I was a young man and sopping up comics at fantastic rate. This takes me back to when comics were fun and just a little scary as well. 

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