Nikolai Dante - Covers be Damned Amazing!

Welcome to a bit of a special Covers Uncovered featuring three (or should that be five?) scorching covers by Simon Fraser, Nikolai Dante creator and all round superstar. Simon has been very generous with his time and effort in sending and annotating these images so I'd like to express my, and I'm sure many others', massive appreciation straight away!

As fans of 2000AD are all too painfuly aware, the Dante's saga is nearing it's conclusion and readers have been gripped as the death toll of the main cast rises. In this most recent arc, Simon has produced some of his most outstanding work to date, quite a bold statement for someone who's artwork is so popular among the fans!

Speaking about the series as a whole, Simon said "There was more discussion about the two Dante covers than usual. I did two initial sketches, Matt liked both of them with some caveats (more blood or foreboding in the romance cover.) Eventually, I changed my mind on both ideas."

Below are the pencils and roughs for the first of those abandoned ideas, the 'Romance' cover, with Dante and Jenna frolicking in the sea where Dante will eventually propose, lovely...
However, Simon had a change of heart, he says "I was discussing the 'romance' cover with my Intern Edwin Huang (www.edwinhuang.com) and we both agreed that some more explicit threat would help the cover, but we couldn't show anything without spoiling the story. So we came up with the symbolic hands emerging from the buildings while Dante & Jena danced oblivious to their peril. Edwin did the initial pencil layout...""Then I drew in the figures, inked the heck out of the buildings and went on to colour in Photoshop. We were all pretty happy with how that one worked out. Edwin is a very talented chap and is now drawing a series for Image Comics."Similarly, cover 2 underwent significant change. "I worked up an idea with a hand holding the ripped and damaged Crest aloft, I deliberately used a really screwed up old calligraphy nib to ink it, so it looked really scrappy and angry..." While I quite liked the result, Matt wasn't so keen and I went back to the original idea, which I think worked out for the best."


Pencils for the crest cover...A colour test:

Inks...Voila, the finished piece...
Wow! After last Prog's shocking Dante climax, everyone's favourite Russian Rogue returns later in the year with the ominously titled 'City of the Damned', let's hope Dante fairs better than Dredd in this one!

As if wowing us with Nikolai wasn't enough, this month sees the serialisation of 'Lilly Mackenzie and the Mines of Charybdis' in the Magazine. Formally a web-comic on the fabulous Act-i-vate website, the story follows a half-Scottish, half-African space travelling babe across the galaxy with her faithful and somewhat besotted friend Cosmo. Simon has added some extras to really let the story breathe in the Megazine and I for one can't wait!

As well as being in the Meg, Lilly is on the Meg. Simon says "The Lily cover was fairly easy. Though I did have a lovely model called Mia pose for Lilly's posture. I used a photograph for the Earth seen from orbit, after messing around with various unsatisfactory painted versions. It turns out that all photos taken on the ISS are public domain. Which is nice!"
Again, thanks to Simon for sending all these wonderful images, he's a true comics evangelist! You can see all of Simon's Dante covers here and here and visit Simon's site and blog by clicking the links.

Siku - Red Dead Redemption!

Behold, the mighty Bayo Akinsiku, or Siku to you and me, is back! Siku painted this epic cover of Prog 1682 for the fantastic, but ever so lengthily titled 'The Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael (and the Dead Left in his Wake') for Prog 1682.

The image has a somewhat religious feel about it which is understandable as Siku is a committed Christian who has been jointly responsible for some massive religious comics such as the Manga Bible and the Manga Jesus trilogy of books.

Siku got his break for 2000AD nearly 20 years ago painting a satirical Judge Anderson strip based on the controversial Rodney King riots of 1991. No stranger himself to controversy, Siku delights in the fact that his unique style of artwork splits fan reaction straight down the middle. His imaginative redesigns of the Judge uniform along with Dredd's ever-expanding chin have had some fans of the future lawman gnashing and wailing like never before!

The artist worked on many 2000AD favourites such as Tales to Telguth, Harlem Heroes, Slaine and Sinister Dexter among others but will most probably be remembers for his outstanding work on Pan African Judges and the wonderful Dredd/Devlin Waugh epic Fetish.

Siku was a natural choice for both these stories. Having lived in Africa for nineteen years of his life, his knowledge of the surroundings and love for the country gushed from every one of his lush double page spreads.

Below we see two Megazine covers for the Fetish epic:

This cover of Megazine 3.33 is a prime example of Siku's brave re-imagining of Dredd's suit his wonderful mega-chins that would split fan opinion!
A Sinister Dexter cover, very much in the visual style of the computer game 'Evil Genius', of which Siku was Visual Director.
Finally, a wonderful image that Siku did for his very entertaining interview at the wonderful 2000AD Review site (you can read it here.) Again, capturing the artist's ever changing style, this image captures Siku's slighly more minimalist 'Meatmonger' Dredd.
I'm a big fan of Siku work, he's a very brave artist with the confidence to stamp his own vision on an institution such as Dredd and would love to see him back in the prog.

You can visit his website here. Thanks to Siku for the HUGE Ichabod image!

Not The Beeeeeees!!!

Here we have Henry Flint’s wonderful cover for prog 1883. In true Bee movie (sorry!) style, this cover pits two terrifying creatures against each other – Zombo versus Zombee! In the red corner (and red codpiece) we have Zombo, the flesh eating, Cameo-esque codpiece wearing, gentleman zombie! And in the yellow corner, Zombee, a creature made entirely out of flesh eating, blood sugar drinking, bees!

This is a gloriously madcap scene from a fantastic story that’s simply bursting with imagination and wit. Among a plethora of screwball ideas, Zombo’s Eleven features bored, suicidal, teens filming their deaths on YouTube to see who can get the most stars, eye ball earrings, a zombie Walt Disney head, a safe cracking dog, a defective Simon Cowell cyborg who can’t see anything wrong with anything, Maggie Broon(!) and the goriest bunch of deaths you’ll ever see in 2000AD.

Above we see the inks for the cover and below we have Henry’s roughs...

And the breath taking final inks...

Super thanks to Henry for sending these!

Willsher Reigns!

I have to say I like nothing more than a stock Dredd cover and Ben Willsher has certainly produced a winner here. A mean and moody Dredd standing in the rain against an absolutely gorgeously coloured background. Amazing stuff!

Here's Ben's 'mock-up' of the cover which is damned impressive in it's own right...
Next his sublime inks (hey Tharg, I want a 2000AD colouring book, dammit!)And finally the finished piece, oh man those Mega City colours are outstanding!
Remember, you can visit Ben's site here and check out some seriously cool work, like these...



Thanks to Ben for sending these great images!

SB Davis - Damnation Station!

Introducing the cast of Al Ewing's latest creation 'Damnation Station.' The story centres on a group of commandos on the orbital space station Earth Station One. The team work for the 'Hosts,' an alien race who own our galaxy. It's the commandos' job to stop any aliens from immigrating to our solar system using any means necessary.

So, from left to right meet June Akiwara (Admin Officer), Jim Bradbury (Medic), Grandpere (the leader of the group), Brett Grayle (heartthrob actor and newest, greenest recruit of the team), Reymont and Tura (grunts) and Joe Nowhere (deputy team leader.)

Art duties will be split between the ever wonderful Simon Davis and the similarly wonderful Boo Cook. Boo has been talking about the story on his wonderful blog and gives us some sneaky peeks at a few of his panels here.

With such a talented team, I'm sure this is destined to be a classic...

Thanks to Pye for sending the cover.

New Futurequake Press Covers have arrived!

A new batch of titles have been unleashed from the guys at Futurequake Press! The 2000AD-based fanzines once again boast a dazzling array of small press and mainstream comic talent including strips from familiar names such as Nick Dyer, Richmond Clements, Bolt-01, Kev Levell, Mike Caroll, Gibson Quarter, Jim Campbell and many more.

As ever, the editorial team chose to go all out and get some big names to produce the eyecatching covers. This gives the already professional looking comics an added touch of class. Above, we see the cover for Zarjaz by 2000AD droid Nigel Dobbyn. Nigel, worked on several strips in 2000AD such as Red Razors and Trash and is probably best remembered for his fantastic work on Strontium Dogs.

Dobbyn says "These are the original pencils for the Zarjaz cover, based on a photo of my dad. The background was added afterwards when Dave (Bolt-01) said it needed to be a wraparound cover. The background was drawn from scratch digitally. Once the pencils are done, I ink everything in Illustrator and colour in Photoshop."

So, if we track down Dobbyn Sr. we'll get to see what Dredd looks like under his helmet! Thanks to Nigel for taking the time to send the rough and the comment, you can see more of his fantastic, and very diverse work on his website here, his blog here and his deviant art page here.

Next, the startling cover of Dogbreath, the Strontium Dog themed fanzine by friend of the blog Neil Roberts. On his blog, Neil says "This was a pure painting job in Photoshop, using a bit of reference to get the pose correct. I was going for a Frazetta/Starblazer feel - sort of late 70's/ 80's vibe. Ace!"


I was lucky enough to meet Mr Roberts recently and he did me this wonderful Dredd sketch below. I asked him to do a Dredd Version of his Jonny Alpha cover of Prog 1656 and this is what he came up with - wow! Loving the Ezquerra bumps!

Finally onto this scrotnig Future Quake cover by rising star Gibson Quarter.
GQ did a great making of the cover here. which has saved me a job, so thanks to him! Gibson is doing some excellent work, working with giants such as Alan Grant in Wasted magazine and I reckon it's just a matter of time before we deservedly see him in the prog. Check out his great blog here.

Thanks to Bolt-01 for sending the images and the rest of his team for making such a superb bunch of comics. Keep on doing such a cracking job fellas! You can support the future talent of 2000AD by buying their products here...

The Gorgeous Artwork of Ben Willsher (and the Dead Left in his Wake.)

Howdy parters, here’s this week’s prog cover by a low down varmint who goes by the name of Ben Willsher! The cover is for the wonderfully titled strip 'The Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael (and the Dead Left in His Wake) by Rob Williams, Dom Reardon and Peter Doherty.

Here's Ben's roughs for the cover...Ben said "When I was first asked to do the cover Matt had suggested "a moody, film-poster style shot of Ichabod, maybe his face in shadow, guns out."; and I took that concept and ran with it. I wanted it to feel like a cross between a film-poster and a photo from the period.

SERVING SUGGESTION: Best viewed with Ennio Morricone soundtrack in the background!"

Here's the inks and that beautiful finished version again...

This is Willsher's fourth cover for the galaxy’s greatest, the other three being Strontium Dog ones. This includes last years’ scorching Alpha cover of prog 1658 shown below...

Ben said that Tharg had sent him this single Carlos Ezquerra panel as reference for the cover...

which led to these thumbnails...

Then to these wonderful inks, wow!
I love Ben’s work, he’s got such a great style and sense of design. Also he draws my (joint) favourite Lawmaster of any 2000AD artist (Jim Murray's take on the Lawmaster for Prog 2004's 'The Good Man' story was amazing!)

Take a look at Willsher's below, it’s sleek angles are so much cooler that the horrible, awkward, boxy version of the 1970’s that we still see today!

Ben has a great site which features some fantastic and very diverse work. You’ll find it here

There are some wonderful designs on there and the posters section is just brilliant! Here are a couple of my favourite images from the site, check it out!

I adore this...
A really cool Dredd piece...
Dredd and Alpha...
A beautiful Jonny Alpha that he did for fun. I'd love to see a cartoon series in this style...
Massive thanks to Ben for sending these wonderful images, I take the varmint comment back!