My pleasure, Animalman.
I've described having Kelley Jones do a run on BATMAN as somewhat like having Berni Wrightson or Michael Golden do the series on a monthly basis.
Like Wrightson or Golden, Kelley Jones brings a very mood-intensive and stylized look to the series.
Despite Jones' clean and detailed art style, some people don't like his work because his anatomy is so clearly distorted. But I find this to be part of the attractive quality of Jones' art, because his art is detailed enough to fit anyone's definition of "realism", but beyond the detail, the distorted anatomy gives the images a more surreal, supernatural effect, as if the world has been thrown through some distorting fun-house mirror. It's reality, but horrifically warped.
And I think, of all characters to illustrate, this works especially well with Batman. Illustrated by Jones, Batman is immersed in a world of shadows and monsters. And Batman
himself takes on the appearance of a monster. And it suits him well.
Jones did about two years of covers on BATMAN before he began drawing the series with issue 515.
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Although he was doing BATMAN/DRACULA:RED RAIN(1991), BATMAN:BLOODSTORM (1993), and DARK JOKER:THE WILD(1995) during this time, before he took over art on the regular BATMAN series in 1995.
Needless to say, I like these covers and art by Jones a lot. I think they capture the essence of what Batman is about. And it was fun seeing Moench and Jones bring out the occult element in Batman's world.
I'd also like to see Jones do more with Batman, the Demon, Deadman, Cain, Abel, Eve, and DC's other mystery characters. We got to see a little of this in the BATMAN, DEADMAN, and SANDMAN issues he did.
