Randy Jones – RIP
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Comic artist and ed-op page illustrator Randy Jones has passed away.
Randy Glenn Jones
May 7, 1949 – December 12, 2025
From the Randy Jones entry at Lambiek:
[Jones] received his artistic training at H.B. Beal Technical school in London, Ontario. Upon graduation, Jones moved to Toronto, where his first illustration job was ‘Goethe’s Faust’ for the University of Toronto Press in 1970. He divided his time between classical illustration and children’s books. Between illustration projects, he started getting editorial illustration jobs, working for almost all the major Canadian newspapers and periodicals, including The Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and Maclean’s.
After four years in Toronto, Randy Jones moved to Manhattan, New York, where he has been active as a freelance illustrator and editorial cartoonist, syndicated through Trimedia Newspaper Syndicate, United Features and his own INX Syndicate. His political cartoons have appeared in the New York Times, New York Newsday, Newsweek, Time, Business Week, U.S. News and World Report, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post.
Also The Boston Globe was a regular client in the 1980s.
[Randy also worked for] magazines like Cracked, Heavy Metal, National Lampoon [link added] and Playboy.
Randy Jones produced comics for National Lampoon until its demise in 1991. For Hugh Hefner’s Playboy, he made the 1980s science fiction spoof gag comic ‘Through Space and Time with Schwimmer and Jones’ (February 1979 – October 1984), with writer Gene Schwimmer. It was printed on irregular intervals in their ‘Playboy Funnies’ section.
For the smokers’ magazine Smoke, Jones drew the superhero parody ‘Cigarman’ (1997-1998), scripted by Sam Gross. Cigarman is the alter ego of wealthy businessman Durham Lonsdale, who is able to turn himself into a giant flying crime-fighter cigar. ‘Cigarman’ was featured on the back cover of each issue of Smoke Magazine from Spring 1997 until Spring 1998.
In 1980, Jones was co-founder of the INX Syndicate, a group of New York Times editorial illustrators banding together. Their goal was to produce and distribute uncensored political images to the news marketplace, keeping editorial control in the hands of the creators. Between 1983 and 2002, the team had a long-term contract with United Feature Syndicate, that took care of the promotion and distribution. After their association with the syndicate ended, the remaining INX members banded together to establish the website inxart.com [link added] and self-syndicate work in a digital variation on the group’s original model.
From 2017 is a Randy Jones interview about illustrating Monsters of the Ivy League.
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