Jones, Gerard

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JONES, Gerard

PERSONAL: Married Jennie Kajiko (a nurse); children: Nicky.

ADDRESSES: Home—San Francisco, CA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, HarperCollins, 10 East 53rd St., 7th Floor, New York, NY 10016-8810. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Media critic, comic and screenplay writer, and cultural analyst. Lemon Custard Comics, cofounder; Art & Story Workshops, founder. Guest appearances on National Public Radio's Fresh Air, PBS American Masters, Fox News Channel, BBC; screenplay writer; worked with Nintendo and Shodakukan.

WRITINGS:

(With Will Jacobs) The Beaver Papers: The Story of the "Lost Season," Crown Publishers (New York, NY), 1983.

(With Will Jacobs) The Comic Book Heroes: From the Silver Age to the Present, Crown Publishers (New York, NY), 1985.

Green Lantern: The Road Back, DC Comics (New York, NY), 1992.

Honey, I'm Home!: Sitcoms, Selling the American Dream, Grove Weidenfeld (New York, NY), 1992.

(With Len Strazewski) Prime Time, Malibu Comics, 1994.

The Comic Book Heroes, Prima (Rocklin, CA), 1997.

Batman: Fortunate Son, artwork by Gene Ha, DC Comics (New York, NY), 1999.

Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy and Make-believe Violence, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to Harper's, New York Times, Guardian, New York Newsday, and Mother Jones online. Contributor to comic strips, including "Batman," "Spiderman," "Superman," "X-Men," "Justice League," and "Green Lantern." Author of "Pokemon" comic strips, collected in Pikachu Meets the Press, Viz publishing. National Lampoon, contributing editor. Writer of screenplays for Warner Bros, Twentieth Century-Fox, Silver Pictures, and Savoy Films; author of teleplays for HBO.

SIDELIGHTS: Gerard Jones, a media critic and former comic-book writer, wrote the parody The Beaver Papers: The Story of the "Lost Season," with Will Jacobs. On May 3, 1963, the producers and writers of Leave It to Beaver learned that the show might be canceled. Famous writers such as John Steinbeck, Rod Serling, and Tennessee Williams wrote satires and scripts for Leave It to Beaver in order to try and save the show from cancellation, but their plan failed. The Beaver Papers is a collection of many of the scripts supposedly written by these famous writers. A Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded, "This is bound to amuse those who grew up with Beaver."

In Honey, I'm Home!: Sitcoms, Selling the American Dream Jones discusses the evolution of the television sitcom as America's views on family and society have changed over the years. Jones starts his analysis with sitcoms from the 1950s and ends with the early 1990s. Sitcoms discussed include Amos & Andy, I Love Lucy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Seinfeld. "His sharp, critical approach offers a welcome antidote to warm and fuzzy nostalgia," commented Wendy Smith in an Entertainment Weekly review.

In Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy and Make-believe Violence Jones argues that children should be allowed to play aggressively and with games that are about violence in order to gain developmental skills and learn about their roles. He also feels that children will act out their aggressions in fantasies instead of real life while playing with violent toys and video games, or watching violent movies. Booklist contributor Vanessa Bush called the work "A compelling look at ever-growing public anxiety about violent games."