My first reaction to Jones depiction of Batman was that this was one ugly super-hero. He looked more like he would spend the weekend getting his rocks off in a back alley with the likes of the Penguin instead of in a nice cozy bed back at Wayne Manor with the Boy Wonder. Know what I mean?

Absolutely. Batman is supposed to be a frightening individual, someone who makes villains shit themselves. Not just another guy in spandex.

Can't say I like the art. A bit messy.

Do you like what he did for Sandman?

I loved the SANDMAN issues he did.

Issues 17, 18, and 22-24, if I recall correctly (collected in the DREAM COUNTRY and SEASON OF MISTS trade collections of the series).

The part I enjoyed most about SANDMAN was its attempt to bring all the DC mystery books, and characters who hosted the books, all together into one unified continuity. Alan Moore started to do this in SWAMP THING 21-50, and Neil Gaiman expanded on this in SANDMAN.

And Kelley Jones' art, being very detailed and a bit Wrightson-esque at the time, created a nice visual continuity with the style of the 70's mystery books, that helped to pull it off.

While also simultaneously expanding into a modern style of horror.


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"This Man, This Wonder Boy..."

Didn't he ink the first few issues too?

I dug out my trade for you, Mxy.

Issues 1-4 were Sam Keith pencils, Mike Dringenberg inks.

Issue 5 is Sam Keith pencils, Malcolm Jones inks

Issues 6-8 are Mike Dringenberg pencils/Malcolm Jones inks.

The Sam Keith art, like Kelley Jones' art, is similarly Wrightsonesque

Especially nice and Wrightsoneque is Sam Keith's double-page spread of Hell and its crawling-dead minions in issue 4, pages 12 and 13.
Especially inked in a way that doesn't look like most of Sam Keith's other work, I can see them being mistaken for Kelley Jones.

But to answer your question, no, these early issues are not Kelley Jones.



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"This Man, This Wonder Boy..."

Oh. I thought it was Jones for a sec because the styles are similar. Then I looked it and saw "Jones" was inking and thought "that explains it".

Kelley Jones' DEADMAN: LOVE AFTER DEATH two-issue series with Mike Baron, in 1989-1990, is where I first noticed him having a pleasant and distinctive style.



The interview I linked sheds some light on this series. I didn't know that Kelley Jones had previously illustrated Deadman in ACTION COMICS WEEKLY, prior to this two-issue series.

And before that, I'd seen Kelley Jones ink stuff for Marvel, and maybe pencils too. (inking Guice in the later issues of the first MICRONAUTS series. I think the second MICRONAUTS series was where I'd first seen his pencils, around 1984-1985 )
And from what he said in the interview, his work wasn't liked at Marvel, and they actually changed his art to keep his style from being visible.

But regardless, when he got to DC, he was ready to do some of his best work.



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"This Man, This Wonder Boy..."

Jones followed up this series nicely, with the DEADMAN: EXORCISM two-issue series in 1992:




~


I don't have the trade, since I already have all the issues, but I believe both are collected in the 1995 trade DEADMAN: LOST SOULS.

It was a nice treat after Kelley Jones' great work on DEADMAN, to have a Deadman crossover in three issues of his BATMAN run, in issues 530-532.

And while I'm generally very negative on the idea of multiple covers, die-cuts, chromium cuts, trading card inserts and whatever, which generally are really trashy gimmicks, there was one regular cover and one glow-in-the-dark-cover for each issue of this three-issue story, and they were cool !
The glow-in-the-dark art really worked with two creepy characters like Deadman and Batman, and the phantoms they were fighting.

I already showed a few of these covers. Here are the
(1)regular
and
(2) glow-in-the-dark covers, respectively, for issue 530 again:



Clicking on each for larger/clearer image of the latter cover, you can better make out the glow-in-the-dark parts of the image.


And here are the regular and glow-in-the-dark-enhanced covers for 531:



Again, the larger/clearer image of this glow-in the dark cover makes the glow-in-the dark portion more visible.
It's harder to see on this one, but it's mostly the mummies with the glow-stuff, and you can definitely appreciate it with the lights out !


And the two variant covers for 532:



I like this last one the best of the three, both with and without the glow-in-the-dark features.


I've seen color overlays that have a similar effect, such as in the early Levitz/Giffen LEGION ( issues 287-306, and 1982 annual), and in the Roger Stern/Marshall Rogers DOCTOR STRANGE (issues 48-53, also out in 1981-1982).

But this is the first and only time I've seen glow-in-the-dark overlays. And again, it really works well with ghost characters.
I don't know if Kelley Jones is the one who came up with the glow-in-the-dark color overlays, but it demonstrates imagination and is visually striking, whoever came up with it.

I wish Jones made his civilian models better.

One I recently read by Kelley Jones is his HAMMER series, for Dark Horse.

Jones did both script and art on these issues, and I think it shows his talent as a comics scripter, when he chooses to be a writer/artist.

A nice mixture of horror and humor, in the H.P. Lovecraft vein, with a touch of Virgil Finlay, especially on the covers.
And some of Jones' best art in the first four issues.

In order, there's the first THE HAMMER four-issue series.


click on images to enlarge



Plus one issue of DARK HORSE PRESENTS, issue 129, (which I don't have) that was released sequentially after the first four-issue series.

Then a single-issue THE HAMMER:UNCLE ALEX.

Then a three-issue HAMMER:THE OUTSIDER.




Links to the other covers, and larger images:

• DARK HORSE PRESENTS 129
  
  HAMMER:UNCLE ALEX cover
  
  HAMMER:THE OUTSIDER covers

I don't know about Kelly Jones, but I do know that I ran FNB's fat ass from this site...

I'll look for Hammer next time I go to the comic shop. Maybe I'll get lucky and at least find the first issue,

Looks like porn to me.

Huzzah!

Does he collect comics?

Kelley Jones has been drawing the "Gotham after Midnite" 12-issue series.
The series sucks balls.
That is all.

Dang it,Joe! Put down the cheeseburgers,french fries,onion rings,sodas,milkshakes,malts,candy bars,licorice,potatato chips... and whatever else you're stuffing in your mouth and pay attention to the topic here!

Jeez, relax. I didn't realize I was mocking your hero, Snarf!

Wow. Another Batman tie-in that sucks balls. Now there's a surprise.

Jones' Batman --and really, any of the series listed here, are quite Halloween-festive.

This double page spread by Jones, from a 2-part story with Swamp Thing, in BATMAN 521-522;

Jones is a competent artist but, Really, he's just an inferior clone of Bernie Wrightson.

Well, while Jones clearly borrows techniques from Wrightson, I think Jones has gone in a direction away from his Wrightson roots.

Jones' DEADMAN and BATMAN work, among other series, are more loosely drawn, giving these series a surreal warping-mirror quality, that for my money adds to the supernatural atmosphere of the series he draws. Which I especially loved in Jones' BATMAN run.

It's kind of like saying Aparo, Grell, Byrne and Brunner are Adams clones. While they clearly have an Adams influence, each has work that is distinctly their own.

For that matter, Wrightson could be said to be a Frazetta clone. But that diminishes how far Wrightson has advanced beyond his Frazetta roots.
But yeah, I'd put Wrightson in a rare category of "comic book fine artists" along with artists like Lou Fine, Al Williamson, Frazetta, Kaluta, Windsor-Smith, Suydam, Bolton, Adams, and Steranko.

While Jones is not on that level, he's still a very good comics illustrator, comparable to Golden, Mignola, Keith, Russell, and Rogers, bringing a very clean and distinctive style to the books he does.

Another Kelley Jones interview:

https://13thdimension.com/the-kelley-jones-interviews-how-marshall-rogers-lit-the-fire/

Looking back on the interview I posted above, I'm surprised no one had any comment on it. It's incredible, that an artist of Kelley Jones' talent and popularity once he began drawing comics professionally, prior to that had no confidence tht he was a good artist, and never even submitted his art to try and get work professionally.
And that a friend of Kelley Jones went to a convention with Jones, and basically tricked Jones into showing his art to Marshall Rogers. And based on that small bit of praise for his art from Rogers, gave Jones the confidence to work professionally in comics.

And here we are 30-plus years later, with a lot of nice Kelley Jones work to look back on.

Jones' early work at Marvel was, if not awful, certainly unrecognizable compared to the decades of work he's done after. He's said in interviews that the editors he worked for didn't like his art, and basically tried to mask or "correct" his art by pairing him with inkers who dominated and eclipsed his linestyle, such as inkers Dan Bulanadi and Bruce Patterson on MICRONAUTS, and MICRONAUTS: THE NEW VOYAGES.

It wasn't until he broke away from Marvel and began doing the DEADMAN:LOVE AFTER DEATH and subsequent work for DC when Kelley Jones' true style became visible, that he fully established himself.

Somehow I stumbled on this 4-issue Kelley Jones MAGNETO series from 1996, that I was previously unaware of.

Definitely conforming to the Jim Lee/Rob Liefeld look of that period, but still worth seeing, and interesting to see a Kelley Jones X-book.