Not a follower of Instagram, I was startled last Friday when my son Nicky texted me that J.D. King, a regular Splice Today contributor, had suddenly passed away. J.D., a longtime illustrator, writer and musician (he played with Thurston Moore in the late-1970s in the band The Coachmen), had many circles of friends and acquaintances, and I was part of one of them. The news was particularly shocking, since we’d emailed as recently as Oct. 26, just him giving me the business about a Splice typo; an unabashed conservative, he also included a link to a Firing Line episode from 1967. He had a website, and his last post was from Oct. 27th. A private man—unfailingly polite and very, very funny—details of his death at his Remsen, New York home were scarce. He was 74.
I first met J.D. in the spring of 1988 at the Soho offices of New York Press, about a month before our first weekly issue was published. How he came to the attention of art director Michael Gentile and me is hazy—it might’ve been through Art Spiegelman or Mark Newgarden—but in the early years of the paper his block illustrations were on the back page each week, in the middle of the “extra-classified” section known as “Press Box.” In September of ’88, J.D. created the cover art for our first “Best of Manhattan” annual.
He was a regular visitor to the office, and, like many other artists, hung out in the production department with Michael and the late Don Gilbert. Michael told me Monday: “On any given day of the week when I was art directing at New York Press, artists would drop by, carrying artwork in hand. Connecting faces with humans during the analogue days was important; these were original comic strips and illustrations. When the world’s tallest cartoonist walked into the art department, heads would turn as excitement built. J.D. King would present a superb new pen and ink drawing, epitomizing the simple, sleek and modern. J.D. helped bring those newsprint pages to life. He played a crucial role in the paper’s design and look. Our hours-long conversations about life, art and music will remain etched in my memory.”
Before he moved upstate, J.D., in sports coat and tie, rarely missed our Christmas and “Best of Parties,” and he’d nurse a beer, chatting amiably with guests. (The picture above is from 1991, with J.D. and Mike Doughty, who wrote music reviews for the paper before starting the band Soul Coughing.) Memories from more than a generation ago are tricky, but I won’t forget a particular act of kindness he showed me. I was a bit late to our offices (then at the Puck Building) one morning in June of 1990, and we arrived at the same time. He’d heard that my sister-in-law had succumbed to ovarian cancer two days earlier, and his words of sympathy weren’t rote, but genuine and heartfelt. As I noted, J.D. traveled in different circles, but that was representative of the man I knew and liked very much. Nobody deserves a sugar-coating in his or her remembrance, and J.D. did have an ornery side, but fortunately I was rarely on the receiving end.
Just last May, in my weekly Splice Today feature “What Year Is It?”, J.D. was the launching point. The story began: “My pal J.D. King is a titan. We met in a Parisian absinthe bar in the late-19th century (two glasses was his limit), took miles-long walks along the Seine, tried to out-do each other in recitations of obscure poetry and bruited about the daily headlines in Le Figaro. It was a swell time. At least that’s what I imagine, and dissenters or ‘haters’ can take it up with Huey, Dewey and Louie, or, in extreme cases, Mary Worth. Brenda Starr’s sitting this one out.”
It was a goof, one which he appreciated and then made self-deprecating jokes on Twitter about it.
I found a 2011 story about J.D. in Utica’s Observer-Dispatch, and Lisa Kapps writes: “[King] names artists like Paul Klee, Andy Warhol, Richard Paul Lohse, Jim Flora and Paul Rand. Musicians like Charlie Parker, Bill Evans and John Cage also have affected the way he creates an image.” Not much to go on, but as I noted, J.D. valued privacy and didn’t seek publicity.
In recent years, I got a kick out of jousting with him on Twitter (along with online friends @lambchops1, @sjgiardini and @davrola, among others) about music, politics and the media. Sometimes I’d include a gratuitous jab at Simon & Garfunkel or Pat Boone in an article, knowing that would get his goat. An early-riser, he’d make cracks right away (including the internet cliches he knew would bug me) and a small Twitter thread would follow. It was a very small corner of the social media world, but I sure enjoyed it and will miss it, and him, very much.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023