PCOC supplemental files
For the ongoing series Jones produced supplemental material at the back of individual issues, framed as files audited by Walter Peck in his role as head of the Paranormal Contracts Oversight Commission drawn from Ghostbusters: The Video Game. The files covered entities encountered in IDW's run, staff profiles, equipment data, and similar reference material, and ran only in the single issues rather than the collected editions. Jones also helped design some of the entities that appeared in the series.
Unrealized pitches
Jones pitched several Ghostbusters projects to IDW that were never published. In 2009 he was invited to pitch a story by Chris Ryall before Displaced Aggression was approved, and again later with another writer and Tom Waltz. The second concept centered on the Spider Witch and was effectively a sequel to Ghostbusters: The Video Game, following Egon Spengler and Ray Stantz investigating murders in the manner of the Spider Witch killings referenced in the game. Both pitches drew positive responses but neither moved forward.
Over the years he submitted other ideas: a crime-flavored book, a "Wicker Man" style horror, and a story following the standard Ghostbusters formula.1 He also pitched an annual built around a John Tobin story, expanding on Tobin's encounter with the Grundel glimpsed in Volume 1 issue #8, with Dan Schoening, Luis Delgado, and Erik Burnham telling a contemporary story alongside it; it was not greenlit.2 He and Tom Waltz also tried to pitch a The Real Ghostbusters series as an IDW digital comic around 2013; when it was passed on, Jones moved to the Real Ghostbusters-themed subscription covers instead.3
In 2016 Jones said he had pitched adaptations of Ghostbusters III: Hellbent several times without success.4 Waltz noted IDW had discussed the idea with Sony, but circumstances including the death of Harold Ramis and shifting priorities at Sony and Ghost Corps sidelined it.5
Tobin's Spirit Guide book
The project Jones is most associated with is a long-discussed printed Tobin's Spirit Guide. When he first joined the ongoing series he asked to do pages based on Tobin's Spirit Guide, but the team found another publisher held those rights, so he suggested the PCOC files instead since Ghostbusters: The Video Game was still new at the time. He later assembled two or three pitches for a full Tobin's Spirit Guide book and met with IDW publisher Ted Adams about it. The proposal catalogued entities drawn from toys, video games, novels, comics, cartoons, and films, was cut down to a projected 250-page book, and used a format of one page of art facing one page of text and diagrams (size charts, PKE readings, and the like). It was not greenlit; the cited reasons were a buyer base seen as too small to cover production costs, limited appeal beyond hardcore fans, and soft comic sales.6
Years later, while working on IDW's Silent Hill comic, Jones learned that Insight Editions held the Tobin's Spirit Guide rights. He spoke with editor Chris Price over several months, mostly about format, but the project stalled amid uncertainty around Ghostbusters III. After Jones took on previsualization for Ghostbusters III and then a Mad Max: Fury Road prequel comic, the book was eventually approved despite remaining budget issues. Hesitant to both write and draw it, Jones agreed to let a writer come aboard, and Burnham was brought in. When Jones was offered a time-intensive ongoing Aliens comic at Dark Horse and the Tobin's timetable remained unclear, he ultimately left the project.6
Ghostbusters III previsualization
Before the next film became the 2016 reboot, Jones was hired to do previsualization for the planned Ghostbusters III. The work, mentioned in his own comic credits, came before Paul Feig was attached to direct the rebooted version.
Cameos and credits
Jones appears in the comics he worked on. In issue #1 he is named on page 22 as the writer of an in-story newspaper article about a Ghostbusters bust in downtown New York. In issue #3 he makes a cameo on page 10 as one of the citizens fleeing the Gozerian Terror Bear. His photo appears above Janine on the subscription cover of Volume 2 issue #1, and on page 20 of Volume 2 issue #20 Tom Waltz appears in a panel walking alongside Jones and Burnham.
Non-Ghostbusters work
Outside the franchise, Jones wrote and drew several issues of Mirage's Tales of the TMNT and contributed to Titan's Magazine and Cereal
. He worked as a reviewer at Digital Retribution and contributed to the Non-Canonical Podcast and the GamePlay Podcast.
References
