Karl Richardson - Better Caul Karl!

After designing the dazzling visuals of Grey Area, it must have been a no brainer for Tharg to command Karl Richardson to dream up entirely new worlds for his latest thrill, Outlier.

The strip follows a murder investigation by Carcer, a ex-cop turned private investigator. Following a gruesome encounter with a mysterious alien race known as the Hurde, Carcer has artificial eyes which allow him to see beyond the visible spectrum. A handy trait of a private eye!

Two murder victims, the murderer and Carcer's own client all have links to 'The Outlier,' a mysterious scavenger ship. What will Carcer discover about this ill-fated vessel?

The cover gives us our first full glimpse of Caul, the villain of the piece. This super-human murderer has had a run in with The Hurde who have altered his suit and physiology. Those wicked tendrils are an extension of his suit and are about to dismember another unfortunate victim...

Below are Karl's fantastically grizzly pencils...

Gimme five brother!

Next up, those glorious inks.

Oooh dearie, that's a nice, long life line you've got there, I can see a marriage line but your Ring of Solomon could be better...

Karl makes a start on the colouring, hmmmm, a more human looking Caul...

Tentacles of Doom

And the mean and moody finished image! The last thing Drexy saw before his bloody death!

Frankie, Doc, Joanne, Lil' Bill, J.R., Boomer and Caul.

I'm really enjoying this strip. The visuals are stunning and I'm getting a real Sherlock/Hannibal vibe from the script. I wonder how the Outlier mission ties into the mystery and who the hell are the Hurde?

Here's how the cover looks in your newsagent, tasty!

Mega thanks to Karl for sending the images, magnificent work as ever!

Edmund Bagwell - Seven Deadly Thrills!

Prog 1874 is a 'Jumping On' issue with FIVE glorious new stories, all wrapped in the gorgeous Edmund Bagwell cover above. The great news is, the prig SOLD OUT at distributer level a week early, meaning that Tharg has had to reprint the Prog!

The new stories include Dredd by the dream team of John Wagner and Colin MacNeil. Brand new Slaine by Pat Mills, featuring the long awaited debut of Simon Davis' fully painted artwork. The return of Sinister Dexter by Dan Abnett and Smudge. New thrill Outlier by Tom Eglington and Karl Richardson and finally Rogue Trooper spin off Jaegir by Gordon Rennie and the brilliant Simon Coleby. 

Edmund's brief for the cover was deceptively simple, "Tharg wanted a group shot with himself behind them." Below we see Edmund's sketch...

Tharg's party piece of controlling six string puppets at once always went down well at parties...

Of course, Edmund knocked it out of the park.

Pure Thrillpower!

The mighty one was so impressed with the image he used it for an exclusive limited edition T-Shirt in the recent London Super Comic Con, modelled below by this handsome chap...

Like a modern day Fonzie...

And here's how the prog looks on your shelf...

"You put your left leg in..."

Thanks to Edmund for the Zarjaz images, make sure you pick up a copy of the Prog this week before it sells out again!

Clint Langley - Who you gonna call?

"If there's somethin' explodin', in your neighbourhood, who you gonna call? RO-BUSTERS!"

 

Clint Langley is absolutely on fine in Prog 1873 as he delivers a brilliant ending to the current ABC Warriors arc. The story ends with a beathtaking homage to the work of Carlos Pino as Clint recreates a page from Issue 2 of Starlord. 

 

Thund... erm, I mean, Ro-Busters are go!

 

Classic Pino from 1978

 

Amazing eh? I particularly love the Star-lord Blueprinters box, lovely memories!



Pino Egregious

 

The Praying Mantis was disaster squad Ro-Busters state of the art Spacecraft which could take them from their base on Devil's Island to any crisis in record time. The modular craft splits into four sections - the front section a heavily armed attack craft, the centre an orbiting base of operations, the back a spacecraft and submersible (for those tricky underwater missions) and a lower section which detaches to deploy robots and equipment.

 

Below is a cracking cross section from the Star-Lord 1979 Sci-Fi special, it's well worth a read (number 18 is my favourite!) 

 



No toilets?

 

This is a truly glorious cover. Over the course of the ABC Warriors saga we have discovered that the avaricious Howard Quartz has been supplying, and profiting from, all sides of the many wars that have plagued the robots across the years. Without Quartz' meddling and his weapons and technology, the ABC Warriors would have been able to fulfil their prime directive to increase the peace!

 

Below we see old 'Mr Ten Percent' playing the Warriors like puppets, I can almost hear an evil, electronic laugh!



The last shadow puppets

Here's how the cover looks on your shelf, in a word, zarjaz!

Insane in the brain!

 

Huge thanks to Clint for sending the cover and the uncoloured Pino tribute, I am truly in awe!



Jon Davis Hunt - Wolf Gasmask Grimshaw!

I'm delighted that Mr Jon Davis-Hunt is back in my Prog and drawing wolves again! He's back on his second 3hriller following his excellent work on last year's futuristic, big stompy mech romp '15.' A story which played to Jon's big stompy mech passion perfectly!

The new story is called 'After the Vengeance' and is set in a desperate future London. We see the aftermath of an uprising by the 99% who, tired of being screwed over by the bankers and politicians, rise up and take the nation's capital. The crumbling streets are controlled by a thuggish militia force called the Canary Wolves, represented by the rather dapper looking chap above.

Over to Jon to tell us about the cover 'The initial sketch I sent to Tharg was based on an earlier quick character concept I did for the Canary Wolves. Basically, they're a militia force in football uniform. I'd played around with a few ideas for a background, but in the end, went for a spray-paint style 'W' on the faceless wall behind.'

'In the initial sketch, you'll see that the gun was white - I had originally intended that all they're weapons be white, but after lighting the image later, Tharg pointed out that this in fact, made them look like they were made of wood. He was of course totally correct, so I changed them to a more sensible looking metallic later.'

A white gun!?!  C'mon Davis-Hunt, we all know that would clash terribly with the thugs' trainers...

Nigel's chronic flatulence was becoming a problem...

'Next came the inks. Straight over the top of my shoddy original sketch!' I'm always a fan of Jon's clean inking style, great stuff!

Petr Cech's face masks got more outlandish by the week...

'Flats went on. Again, I stuck to the football strip style. You can see the gun is still white at this point.'

Wolves' new away kit was a bit confusing to the fans.

'And finally, all lit up! I went for a very harsh Red/Blue hard light/back light, just to make the image stand-out more from the white background. And that was that!'

Your militia needs YOU!

And here's how the cover looks on your newsagent's shelf, marvellous!


Nom de Wolves?

I like this cover, it really appeals to the ThreeA collector in me, check out the recent Marquis de Plume figure to see what I mean. 

Whalloping great thanks to the lovely JDH for sending the cover. I'm enjoying this story (artist David Ballie is quite the writer!) and am looking forward to see where it goes. 

Dylan Teague - The Law Town Worm.

'Whisht! Lads, haad yer gobs, an ah'll tell yer all an awful story! Whisht! Lads, haas yer gobs, an ah'll tell yer boot the worm!'

Dylan Teague absolutely knocks it out of the park with this fantastic cover as Dredd faces off against the Conquerer Worm in the current Dredd thrill, Squirm! I'm a big fan of this story, while I was skeptical at first, thinking it was going to be a light hearted X-Factor/Megs Got Talent parody, it soon turned into a thrilling, tense little action horror with a plot that (quite literally) twisted and turned! Pure TB Grover this, if fact I thought of 'The Black Plague several times when reading it, the Dredd of the year so far for me...

I love Dylan's cover too, a proper, old school Dredd in peril image that'd make me pick up the prog for sure! Below we see Dylan's extremely tight sketch - maaaan, I'd have been happy with that on the cover!

Here's lookin' at you kid!

Followers of Dylan's work will know he's very skilled at using Google Sketchup so he lashed up this 'quick Sketchup model' to help with perspective - talented git! 

Dredd's best friend.

And here's the model positioned and exported to fit the cover...

A Mega-City One Viagra ad. 

 With the model and sketch married together, Dyan produces these fine pencils...

Dredd wishes he had a tube of Justice Dept approved breath mints...

Which lead to these spectacular inks!

Bite once, bleed many (that is the geekiest thing I've ever written) 

And here's Dylan's trademark colours, which as ever are brilliant. To see the work that Dylan puts in, just zoom in on a random square inch or so and prepare to be blown away!

In the Lair of the Pink Worm

And here's how the cover looks with the cover type, lovely!

'Say Aaaaaaaaaagh!'

Giant tapeworm sized thanks to Dylan for sending these fantastically disgusting images! Please spend LOTS of time checking out Dylan's blog. He's sketchbook is amazing and check out his commissions - I'm the proud owner of one and it was a steal!

Cliff Robinson & Dylan Teague - Bullet Points!

Oh that Cliff Robinson has gone and done it now! It started with people getting slapped about a bit, the odd daystick incident maybe. This led to the 'Faceboot' debacle of Prog 1847 quickly followed by full on splattage by Lawmaster in Meg 338 and the infamous Santa head butt of Meg 343.

But this week he's finally gone and done it. Oh that poor perp, I mean yeah, he's a robbing, bribing, resistant, dishonest wannabe murderer but did he really have to die?

I wonder just what these poor Megacitizens have done to upset Mr Robinson? They're having a hard time as it is, I mean there's just been a git big plague and stuff. Little Norbert on the cover there probably lost a kitten during Judgement Day or his Nana Agnes during Necropolis. I just think a little understanding or compassion would have been nice before mercilessly blowing him away on the cover like that.

Cliff Robinson, I beg you, for the children, on your next cover can we get a picture of Dredd just hugging it out with a perp? Maybe a scene from a perps' day-release trip to Black Atlantic Beach like the Daily Mail keep getting outraged about? A tea party? Dredd and Judge Death pony trekking? No...?

Aaaargh! Well drokk you Robinson, I'm gonna shove this Rotring Artpen right in your ars...

BLAM... SPLAT! See? That how it happens, all the violence in Megacity-One is Cliff Robinson's fault and he should be ashamed.

Seriously though this cover is genius. I've said many times how I love Cliff's constantly inventive covers. From little self contained stories or a focus on a piece of tech or clothing, they're always brilliant! 

Below we see Cliff's sketch - bit of a Devlin Waugh vibe going on there...

Houdini's catching a bullet with his head trick went drastically wrong...

And here's the corpse tidied up and repositioned a bit...

Movember really brings out the worst in people...

With the elements in place, Cliff pencils the cover, removing that rather glorious moustache...

Did he cut himself shaving?



And finally, Cliff's trademark exquisite inks. Check out the detail on the tattoo...



A bit of Polyfilla and two paracetamols and everything'll be ticketyboo!



With Cliff's terrible crime committed, it was up to his accomplice Dylan Teague to colour the image. Below we see his amazing work...

"Happy deathday to you! Happy deathday to you! Happy deathday dear Norbert, happy deathday to yooooouuuu!"

If you're reading this you probably know this was the cover of 2000AD's 37th birthday Prog. Note how on the published version, the sentencing adds up to 37 years, cool eh? Note how they've also changed the 'Death' sentence to 'Life', it's a bit late now fellas!

 

A great big walloping thank you to Messrs' Robinson and Teague for their sterling efforts. Look out for a brilliant Dylan Teague cover in the next couple of days, exciting!