Prog 1671 - Lawgiver? Check! Daystick? Check! Erm...draining board? Check!

At last, a cover by the legend that is Cliff Robinson! Cliff is among a handful of classic, iconic 2000AD artists who, thankfully, still produces work for the galaxy's greatest today. And what amazing work it is!

Cliff is responsible for well over 100 covers for the mighty House of Tharg, many of them being among the most iconic, enduring and memorable in 2000AD's long history. His depictions of Dredd are impeccable, and because of this grace 2000AD merchandise for everything from poster flags to geometry sets to bobble heads to socks! I have a Cliff special planned very soon where I will be highlighting many of his amazing covers.

Onto Prog 1671, which features this wonderfully composed and executed cover showing our favourite law man battling a Cursed Earth dragon. This was for the story Dragon's Den, a cracking Gordon Rennie scripted tale which saw Cliff on art duties for the first two parts and P.J. Holden for the second half of the story.

Above we have the finished version of the cover and below the roughs...
Cliff said "I based Dredd's makeshift armour on P.J.'s design after he emailed me the pencils of that lovely splash page of Dredd from episode 3." Thanks to P.J. for sending those pencils...

And, of course, the finished inks.
Which brings us to Cliff's beautiful finished line work. Cliff notes "You may notice on my original line art, I (for some weird reason) thought it would be a 'good idea' for Dredd to have (what looks like) a washing up drainage rack on his left shoulder pad. I'm not sure just how much more protection that would have afforded him though. I must have been on the wine when I came up with that amazing idea. I got rid of it once I'd come to my senses!"

One more time.
Breathtaking stuff! Thanks to Cliff for being so generous with his time, he really is a star. Please check out his superb blog here, the banner is particularly nice...