Middle Earth

This (as is noted in the text below) was a Jeffrey Jones portfolio published originally in black and white by Middle Earth Publishing. It was printed in color in some comic book or other. Middle Earth is well known for the Frazetta portfolios, but they also published some Barry Smith, Roy Krenkel, John Severin and such, commissioning each artist.

While I was in the Army I became friends with one of Middle Earth's publishing partners and we swapped and sold each other some cool books and art.  I finally drifted on to other places and learned several years later that he had died, tragically young. Several more years went by when I first met my wife and married her. I found out that one of her best friends was the other partner for the now defunct Middle Earth. It was a small world become smaller to find that my wife and I had friends in common, even though she and I met in completely unrelated circumstances. Because of all this I was able to acquire some other cool books and art that was part of Middle Earth's collection. One piece I was fortunate to acquire was the original to the drawing shown above.