Gerard Jones Was Released From Jail In December Last Year

Gerard Jones, long-standing comic book writer, was sentenced in August 2018 by a San Francisco court to six years in federal prison. Jones, 65, pled guilty to the charges in April 2018 and was remanded on bail until sentencing.

He was arrested in September in 2016 after YouTube tipped off police that he had uploaded suspected child pornography to a private YouTube channel, and he was charged in regard to distributing and possessing child pornography. the following January. As a result, DC Comics cancelled planned reprints of his Justice League and Green Lantern work. Although originally planning to plead innocent, having gathered character witness statements from his friends, neighbours and comic book industry colleagues, he changed his plea to guilty at the last moment. Those good character statements were then used by his legal team, alongside psychological reports, to argue to allow Jones bail before sentencing, which unusually was granted. Jones began serving his sentence on the 30th of November, 2018. He wrote a blog in prison, which has now been deleted.

According to court records, Bleeding Cool understands that Jones was released early, at the very end of the year, the 30th of December 2022, four years and one month after being jailed. His original sentence states that he will remain under supervised release for a further five years after serving time.

In comics,  Jones is also known for co-creating the Ultraverse character Prime, about a child who instantly turns into a super-strong adult superhero, as well Topaz, who appeared in the 2017 Thor: Ragnarok movie. He also co-created The Trouble with Girls, Solitaire, Ultraforce, and Hulk 2099; wrote the Green Lantern stories Emerald Dawn, Emerald Dawn II, Mosaic, and the Guy Gardner series that so defined the current version of the Green Lantern character,  and Martian Manhunter: American Secrets, which also defined the Martian Manhunter for the current comics.

He also wrote the non-fiction books The Comic Book Heroes: The First History of Modern Comic Books, Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Superheroes and Make-Believe Violence and Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book. He had been working on a new book both before and after his arrest, and much of his legal concern was over content stored on seized computers which he wanted returned so he could finish his book, titled Nation of Faith and Flesh: The Moral War that Shaped America.