WARNING: This article discusses rape, sexual assault and child pornography.
Recently, Gerard Jones was sentenced to six years in prison for possession of child pornography; the author and comics writer, arrested in 2016, pleaded guilty in April. At his sentencing, the 60-year old Jones was ordered to pay $10,200, was additionally sentenced to five years of supervised release, ordered to pay restitution to his victims and will begin serving his sentence on November 30 of this year.
The end of Jones' trial still probably comes as a shock to those who know him through either his comics work for Marvel, DC or Viz Media, or his nonfiction writing, like the Eisner Award-winning Men Of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book. While Jones was never really a superstar writer of his era, he has -- or had -- a generally well-regarded legacy in comics.
In the wake of his singularly horrific crimes, amidst the more pressing question of how his conviction provides justice and healing for his victims, there comes the (again much less important) quandary: What should happen to that body of work?
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The obvious parallels lie in television. In 2015, after the Charleston shooting and the outcries of displaying the Confederate flag in public that followed it, both TV Land and CMT quietly dropped reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard from their schedules.
In a more relevant, higher-profile example, when Bill Cosby's decades of rape and sexual assault of women came back into the public eye in 2014 (setting off a series of events that eventually led to Cosby's conviction for assault this past spring), several television networks pulled reruns of The Cosby Show and I Spy , while Netflix and NBC scrapped development deals with the fallen star.
Unlike with Dukes, there was some backlash towards this, given the pioneering role and stature that The Cosby Show holds in the history of both television and African American popular culture. Publications like Ebony weighed the pros and cons of shelving such a historically important, popular and beloved show considering its legacy was now forever tainted by its titular star.
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Gerard Jones had lengthy runs at the Big Two, notably being central to the Green Lantern and Justice League lines for DC, including penning what's probably still the most widely read Hal Jordan story ever. Green Lantern #46, a tie-in to the "Reign of the Supermen!" arc of "The Death of Superman," saw Hal Jordan confront and fight Mongol over his role in the destruction of Coast City, an issue reprinted in collections of what's still one of the highest-selling storylines in comics to this day.
Perhaps even more significant is Jones' role in some of the most popular manga ever created. When Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball were both brought to America by Viz Media, it was Jones who adapted it from Mari Morimoto and Lillian Olsen's translations. Jones' words are also how American readers first encountered the work of Rumiko Takahashi's Inuyasha and Ranma 1/2, as well as Nobohiro Watsuki's seminal Rurouni Kenshin. (Notably, Watsuki was also found guilty of possession of child pornography by Japanese authorities earlier this year.)
RELATED: Writer Gerard Jones Changes Plea to Guilty on Child Pornography Charges
There are several other titles in Jones' oeuvre, but these are the big ones. And what should the respective publishers do? The most obvious solution and the least costly one is to let it all go out of print, but there are obstacles to this approach that make it unlikely to happen.
For one thing, while large chunks of Jones' DC work aren't in huge demand anymore from a consumer standpoint, "The Death of Superman" is, as we said, one of the highest-selling superhero stories of all time. Given the pivotal role Green Lantern plays in the final arc of that story, reprinting that story without the tie-in issue would be confusing to new readers. But aside from that, DC really has no reason to reprint, say, Batman: Jazz. Ditto Marvel, who still has comics written by Jones up on Marvel Unlimited at the time of this writing, but may not necessarily be all that motivated to keep them in bookstores moving forward.
But it's Viz who has the hardest call to make, here. Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z is easily the most influential manga (not named Akira) of the last 50 years, and a book that famous and popular is simply never going to go out of print. Ditto works like Inuyasha, which is almost certainly seeing a boost in interest after Takahashi was finally inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame this year.
But Viz has an easy solution. Given that translation standards have become better and much tighter over time as manga has become the fastest-growing sector of the modern Western comics marketplace outside of kids' OGNs, and given the jarring inconsistencies in Dragon Ball/Z specifically (unnecessary censorship, bizarre speech patterns and naming conventions), it would be worth Viz's investment to commission new translations and adaptions of works Jones was involved with. In fact, Viz has already begun doing so in the upcoming omnibuses of Takahashi's Urusei Yatsura, though there has been no mention if Jones' involvement with the original translation factored into this move.
It'd be a relatively simple thing to do for DBZ also, and, if done well, could bring the series a new publicity boost (not that some of them really need it). Given that Viz suspended serialization of Watsuki's latest Kenshin work after his arrest, there's a precedent for the publisher to fall back on. At the very least, it's one way of ensuring that iconic material can retain such status, free of a toxic presence like Jones'.