Jeffrey Catherine Jones: Early Sword & Sorcery Comics

Jeffrey Catherine Jones did some early Sword & Sorcery comics before and after the rise of old Conan. Some of these comics aren’t pure S&S but a mix of caveman stuff, Sword & Planet and that weird blend that is Science Fantasy. No matter the exact genre, Jones’s work shows his early promise and ability. Jones would become more selective about comic work, doing the running series of “Idyl” for National Lampoon but concentrating more on cover paintings. His artwork adorns a great number of Sword & Sorcery books as well as comics. I wrote about some of them here.

NB: In 1998, Jeff began conversion therapy and became Catherine Jones. Since all the material I am talking about is long before that date I will mostly use the pronouns “he” and “his”. This is not intended as any disrespect. Whether he or she, Jones was the greatest Sword & Sorcery painter after Frank Frazetta. All of her work is an inspiration and foundational.

Jeff got started in the independent magazines published by Bill Spicer and Larry Ivey. Like Wally Wood and others, the S&S action was first in these largely underground publications. Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian is half a decade away.

“KU! Primordial” (Fantasy Illustrated, Summer 1965) was written by Jeff Jones. He would have been around twenty-one when he did this strip.

“Dragon Slayer” (Monsters & Heroes #2, 1967) was written by Louise Jones (Jeff’s wife at the time).

Jeff joined artists like Reed Crandall, Steve Ditko and Wally Wood in drawing Sword & Sorcery for James Warren’s Horror magazines, Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, the first professional haven of heroic fantasy. Since this was the early days of Warren, most of these were written by Archie Goodwin. Jeff got his first color comics with Charlton.

“Angel of Doom” (Creepy #16, August 1967) was written by Archie Goodwin

“To Slay a Dragon” (Eerie #11, September 1967) was written by Archie Goodwin

“Pharsalus The Triumph of Caesar” (Mandrake #8, September 1967) was written by Raymond Marais

“Flash Gordon and the Monster Men of Tropica!” (Flash Gordon #13, April 1969) was written by Bill Pearson

DC Comics noticed the great stuff being done at Warren and decided to try it with “Nightmaster”, a three-parter mostly done by Jeff’s friend, Berni Wrightson. Jeff helped with the inking chores. He would do this again when Sword of Sorcery tried again a few years later.

“Nightmaster” (DC Showcase #82, May- #84, August 1969) as written by Denny O’Neil.

Cover (Web of Horror #1, December 1969) for Terry Bisson and Ralph Reese’s “The Skin-Eaters”

Unpublished “Balor the Barbarian” (Jungle Jim #21, 1970) probably written by Jeff Jones.

October 1970 saw the arrival of Robert E. Howard’s Conan at Marvel. Again, a friend of Jeff’s, Barry Windsor-Smith, drew the comic for two years. Jeff continued doing mostly black & white work for Warren and their rival, Skywald.

“Quest” (Vampirella #12, July 1971) was written by Jeff Jones.

Cover (Nightmare #6, December 1971) for Marv Wolfman and Ernie Colon’s “The Love Witch and the Battle of the Living Dead”.

Cover (Savage Tales #3, February 1973) taken from the second edition of Lin Carter’s The Quest of Kadji (Belmont, 1971)

Sword of Sorcery #1-5 (February/March -November/December 1973) was written by Denny O’Neil.

Cover (Psycho #12, May 1973) for Gardner F. Fox and Jack Katz’s “The Swordsman of Sarn”, originally intended for Science Fiction Odyssey #1. More on that, here.

“The Guardian Spiders” (Charlton Bullseye #1, January-February 1975) (read the full comic here) was possibly written by Jeff Jones.

“Frontispiece” (Savage Sword of Conan #5, April 1975) appeared on the inside cover of The Savage Sword of Conan, a place where all the best fantasy artists appeared. It was his only appearance in a Marvel title.

“Cover” (Star*Reach #6 (October 1976) featuring Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone.

Conclusion

Jones worked in other genres in these years as well, drawing Horror and Science Fiction for Warren and illustrations for Ted White’s Fantastic. Cover paintings took over the majority of Jeff’s time for the period after 1975. Unlike pals, Mike Kaluta, Berni Wrightson and Barry Windsor-Smith, Jones worked outside of comics field for most of his career. All four of “The Studio” artists worked both in comics and in cover illustration. Each found their place within the fantastic genres, becoming the best of their generation.

It is a pleasure to see Jeff’s collected early comics in one place. His work with ink, rather than paint, is equally moody. For that was what Jones always brought to heroic fantasy: mood. You could feel that you weren’t in the ordinary world. That this was some other place but it had weight and motion like our world. Jeff Catherine Jones deserves her place beside masters like Frank Frazetta as a seminal artist of Sword & Sorcery.