JVJ Publishing is me, Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.
I've been collecting illustrative and comic art for over 50 years. You may have encountered my name in Promethean Enterprises in the early 1970s, in the "acknowledgment section" of the Overstreet Price Guide, as a reviewer/publisher for George, a co-editor of Jerry Bails' and Hames Ware's Who's Who of American Comic Books, or as the co-proprietor of Bud Plant Illustrated Books from 1987 to 2005. Along the way I researched the careers of many comic book artists, contributing to bibliographies of Al Williamson, Jack Kirby, Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, John Buscema, John Severin, Bernard Krigstein, and even wrote a book on Everett Raymond Kinstler. In addition, I've written over one hundred illustrator biographies ranging from E.A. Abbey to N.C. Wyeth that have been popular on the web from more than a decade.
Over the years I've found that sharing information and images is my passion. In 2001, I tired of writing the on-line biographies and acquired two items that led directly to JVJ Publishing and The Vadeboncoeur Collection of ImageS Magazine.
The first was a bound volume of the French magazine, L'Image, from 1900, and the other was an all-Heinrich Kley issue of the German Jugend magazine from 1910 with eight pages of his work in color. Sharing those Kley color pieces became an obsession. Soon I began conjuring up a magazine that would reprint great art that hadn't been seen for a century. L'Image provided the name, Jugend the format and half the content, and my eclectic tastes filled it out with pictures from books and magazines in my collection.
ImageS, now at issue thirteen, and Black and White ImageS, now at issue five, primarily reflect my taste, but have benefited over the years from the sharing of other collectors and have maintained an international/European focus. Like an archeologist searching the world's discarded artistic detritus, every issue brings new discoveries, new images, and new artists — thanks to revisits to my archives, submissions from subscribers, and my own explorations of the flea markets of Paris.
Each issue is a treasure chest filled with forgotten illustrations perhaps being saved from extinction, but certainly from obscurity. As our artistic heritage is forgotten or, more sadly I think, reduced to tiny web thumbnails, ImageS attempts to rePRINT them the way I think they should have been seen the first time: full-size (or larger) reproduced with modern restoration techniques on good paper using the best printing possible.
The criteria has always been art in the public domain, i.e. from 1922 and earlier, The scans are cleaned, restored and renewed and then printed, since issue nine and B&W issue 3, via a stochastic (screenless) process and always on 100 lb coated stock. The techniques used are of my own development and include color correction and balancing that are my attempts to restore the art to its original state. As with the Sistine Chapel, for some this is sacrilege. For me it is homage.
The past has always been a tremendous resource for modern illustrators and animators. JVJ Publishing and ImageS traces and enhances these influences and acts as a resource for artists of today to share in the stylistic richness that has been forgotten or truncated with time. I hope to show the paths of influence - in the pages of the magazine, in the black and white anthologies, on the Illustrators biographies on these web pages, and even in the Kinstler book. The richness of this heritage has yet to be fully revealed. We've simply forgotten too much.
Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.
