Gerard Jones wrote comic books, including some for DC. He wrote books on comic book history and on pop culture. I liked talking to Gerry on the phone or at conventions. He seemed like a nice, bright guy.
Then something happened. I'll quote Wikipedia on it…
Jones was arrested in December 2016 on charges of distributing and possessing child pornography. His lawyer first entered a plea of "not guilty," but in April 2018 Jones changed his plea to "guilty," admitting that the police had found "numerous electronic devices containing tens of thousands of images and hundreds of videos of child pornography" in his home. In August 2018, Jones was sentenced to six years in prison, followed by a five-year period of supervised release, with an unspecified amount of restitution to be paid to his victims.
Jones is presently serving time in prison and is wrestling — I'm not sure that's the proper word — with various issues of atonement and rehabilitation and introspection and addiction and overcoming that addiction…and he's doing it the way most writers would: By writing. His letters from prison are being posted on this website and the design there is a bit confusing so here's a link to his first entry.
Reading what's posted so far left me with the sense of a man who's trying real, real hard to have his life make sense and to understand why he's where he is. I don't mean he doesn't understand why he was arrested and tossed in prison. I'm impressed that he seems to understand that with crystal clarity: It was because of an addiction…a couple, actually. But he's trying to grasp the reasons for those addictions and I'd like to see him achieve that. It might be a learning experience for us all.