Way back in Prog 484 (August 1984) Dredd had the stomm kicked out of him by a Martial Artist from the Radlands of Ji, known as Stan Lee. Three years later, the assassin returned to Mega-City One and Dredd finally got revenge, humiliating him live on Tri-D (Mega-City TV.)This angered the 'Fighting Heart' Kwoon, the school that instructed Stan Lee, so they trained a new warrior to kill the law man and give the school back it's honour. This warrior was called Wu Wang, a young, female warrior also known as Dragon Daughter! The assassin was successful in abducting and torturing Dredd, but was bested by him when trying to get him to apologise for his crimes, before she would kill him. Obviously, this girl didn't read comics!
Fast forward to the present and over in the Megazine, the daughter of Wu Wang and Stan Lee is in town to rescue her father from the cubes and avenge the death of her mother. She has enlisted the help of Tempest, former crime kingpin, to help her navigate the Undercity so that she can bust in to Mega-City One's most notorious cubes, Iso-Block 666!
Tempest artist Jon Davis-Hunt was kind enough to send me these superb images showing how he constructed the zarjaz cover of Megazine 293. First the roughs...
Then the inks...
Blimey, they're ace! Next, Jon begins to colour and shade the piece...
Before giving it some zip by adding effects in Photoshop!
Thanks to Jon for sending these beautiful images, please visit his site here for more!
Thanks for that, another good example of the importance of this blog - I didn't like that cover but seeing the process I think the penultimate version is rather good (in particular seeing the early versions helps emphasise JDH's tasty penmanship). Unfortunately, the extra zip seems too harsh - the hard white annihilates the colour underneath then falls away rapidly at the edges making it look unnatural, washing the other colours out in contrast and making some areas (like the "airbrushed" shadows of the face) look odd. Granted it did need a little lift to make it into a cover but the lighting effect seems to have gone too far.
ReplyDeleteThanks to this blog I get a better appreciation for the cover and JDH's work in general.
More of this please - so nice to see a piece all the way through.
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