Thursday, May 24, 2007

Massimo Belardinelli: An Appreciation

(Update: The Judge Dredd Megazine #259 (dated 26 June 2007) contains a full obituary of Belardinelli by Michael Molcher, including information about his early career and working relationship with 2000AD. Available from newsagents and Tharg's Future Shop at 2000ADonline.com.)

A rare colour Dan Dare strip from the 2000AD Annual 1978

Always behind the times as I am, it wasn't until I started catching up on my backlog of 2000AD's the other day that I spotted the news that Massimo Belardinelli had died.

Belardinelli is almost forgotten these days; even when he's remembered, it's for his later work on the likes of Meltdown Man and Ace Trucking. The stories he worked on tended to be popular with 2000AD's younger readers, and when the comic moved more towards an adult audience at the end of the Eighties, he was left behind.

This reading of Belardinelli's career ignores the key role he played in helping to set the style and tone of 2000AD in its formative years. Carlos Ezquerra is rightly credited for creating the whole 2000AD "gritty future" look with its monumental, organic-looking architecture in the first episode of Judge Dredd; but what tends to be forgotten now is that after that story, Ezquerra left 2000AD until Prog 86.

In the first fifty progs, I'd say the job of defining and refining 2000AD's visual style was really in the hands of three people; Mike McMahon, who started as an Ezquerra copyist but who soon found his own feet and went on to create the defining look for Judge Dredd, Ian Gibson whose bouncy, exuberant take on the future would one day find its best expression in Robo-Hunter, and Massimo Belardinelli.

The reason I pick these three artists is because, as an eager ten-year old reading his mates' copies of 2000AD, they were the ones who seemed to be building a distinctive future world that was utterly different to anything I'd seen before. It has to be remembered that in those days, much of what appeared in 2000AD was not overtly futuristic; M.A.C.H.1 and Shako could have appeared in any boys' comic of the time, and even Flesh, a classic 2000AD concept, was not visually very distinguished. Dave Gibbon's rather orthogonal take on future-tech was lovingly-rendered but seemed to me to fit into an established, post-Hampson tradition; Brian Bolland and the Brett Ewins-Brendan McCarthy* axis seemed uncomfortable with the future and tended to draw it like the present, sprayed silver and with fins glued on. This was doubly true of long term comic stalwarts such as John Cooper, Ron Turner and Barry Mitchell, whose work graced the pages of 2000AD in the early days. Kev(in) O'Neill, who was to become one of 2000AD's defining voices, was the comic's art director at this stage; his influence would not begin to be felt for a year or so.

*at that time; Brendan was to really hit his stride a few years later.

Belardinelli's Dan Dare from 2000AD Prog 7

While McMahon and Gibson were powering away within the world of Judge Dredd, it was Massimo Belardinelli who carried the torch in the rest of the comic. Although not as radical or gritty as Ezquerra, his elegant, finely detailed approach to future tech was distinctive and had a real scale and grandeur; to my ten-year-old's eyes it looked like real art. Belardinelli's re-imagined Dan Dare was the lead strip in 2000AD Prog One and his nightmarish Biog aliens with their two-mile-long starships made of living flesh (see above) deserve to be remembered among the comic's all-time highlights. From Dan Dare, he went on to draw Inferno, the sequel to The Harlem Heroes, but possibly his best work is on the slightly-later Flesh Book 2, in which landscapes and seascapes, complex architecture and animal musculature were rendered with an engraver's eye for detail.
It's my belief that in those early days, Belardinelli's distinctive visual style helped to lift the rest of the comic up to the standard that was being set by Judge Dredd - and depending on who was drawing Dredd, he could be left carrying the torch on his own. The first 2000AD I ever owned was Prog 11, in which Dredd was drawn by Ron Turner, an established British comic artist whose work I knew well from the likes of TV21; his work was solid and dynamic, but it seemed desperately old-fashioned next to Belardinelli's Dan Dare, which had a wild, almost alien quality to it - now that was the shape of things to come!


Belardinelli and Dredd: not a comfortable fit.


So why is Belardinelli so under-appreciated these days? I think much of it may be that his great weakness was in drawing the human figure and facial expressions; his characters looked more like elegant puppets than real people, and there's a slight sense about his work that he'd rather be drawing the backgrounds than the characters in front of them (something I can sympathise with). The result of this was that he mostly tended to draw either situation-based stuff (Flesh, Meltdown Man), or fantastickal/comical adventures that didn't fit with 2000AD's increasingly hard-edged tone (Blackhawk, Ace Trucking). He tended not to work on 2000AD's mainstream characters (there's one Judge Dredd story where he's obviously not at home, and it's hard to imagine him working on ABC Warriors or Strontium Dog). The one exception is Slaine; Belardinelli drew most of the first series, but it was never put into reprint by Titan, and is now largely forgotten - see Pat Mills' tribute to Belardinelli on Down The Tubes.net for more on this.


An all-time classic; the cover to 2000AD prog 93

The sad thing now is that very little of Belardinelli's work is available in print. Rebellion have put out 2000AD Extreme Editions of Flesh Book 2 (already out of print) Meltdown Man and The Dead. Of these, Flesh Book 2 is the most worth having for the art, though as possibly the last 2000AD strip written in the post-Action sensationalist style ("NOO! Please let me DROWN before the GIANT SCORPIONS get me!") it can be slightly hard going. Meltdown Man is surprisingly readable but very slight, and The Dead is just plain strange. The 2000AD Annual 1978 can often be found in second-hand shops, and contains a full-colour Dan Dare strip by him.
(Since first writing, one of Belardinelli's later series, The Mean Team, has also been released as a 2000AD Extreme Edition).

His greatest legacy is perhaps in the foundations he helped to lay for 2000AD; a tradition of imagination, craftsmanship, boldness and invention. So love his work or loathe it, if you're a 2000AD reader, you do well to remember that the comic you read today owes a great deal to Massimo Belardinelli.

11 comments:

Paddy Brown said...

Well said. I loved Meltdown Man and Ace Trucking, and he did great work on Flesh and Inferno as well. His Slaine didn't quite seem to work somehow, although his backgrounds were beautiful. It's true he didn't draw great faces, but that's never seemed to hurt Ezquerra any.

Unknown said...

Sometime in the early 80's there was a terrific reader cartoon in Tharg's Nerve Centre called "how to give yourself an Ezquerra profile" in which a guy flattens out his face by whacking himself with a cricket bat :-)

paulhd said...

Nicely put. Any time Belardinelli was asked to draw someone melting (or something) I was a happy reader. The was an odd Future Shock type story in the early 300's that he drew about a guy selling his soul that I poured over.

John Freeman said...

Great tribute. Pat Mills wrote a smashing tribute for me over on downthetubes.net (go to features, link on right hand side of page).

Unknown said...

A fantastic and eloquent tribute to 2000AD's most neglected stalwart.

I sometimes wonder how Belardinelli's later career might have shaped up had his (really rather lovely) Slaine work not been stacked up against McMahon pretty much redefining the standards of comic art ...

A sad loss, it must be said, redeemed somewhat by the knowledge that the diligence of Robby Cox meant that a great many messages of admiration and affection from the 2000AD message board were relayed to Massimo in the last year or so.

Cheers!

Jim

Danny Dare said...

Great article! I totally agree with you - Massimo's 2000AD Dan Dare was utterly brilliant. It was the Dan Dare I grew up with and which led me to discover the excellent original 50's version too. Wish that someone would reprint all the 2000AD Dan Dare stories as has been done with the old Eagle ones.

Johnny Rem said...

Very sad news... His work really takes you to another realm.

Unknown said...

i grew up reading 2000ad and although recognising Massimo's weaknesses , i always loved his art it looked as if it were alive.I mentioned his flaws is there any body that knows of a 2000ad artist without any? Massimos art was unique and his very own.So much so that for the last three years i have an original page of his art ,framed {ace trucking company} and hanging up in my house.Thanks for you learned and eloquent appreciation of an "Artist"

Anonymous said...

how can anyone critisise this man's work is beyond me. I think some people should be ashamed of their comments. Belardenelli's Dan Dare revolutionised comic art. It was simply very creative and his art should be in the Tate. It beats any of those so called modern artists anyday. Belardenelli's Dan Dare was so much better than the conservative Eagle versions. It was comic punk rock. Also Black Hawk in 2000ad drawn by the genius was great as well and oh yes Flesh 2 was great.

Anonymous said...

I met Ron Turner's daughter a couple of years ago and mentioned Judge Dredd, she informed me that the strength of ill feeling towards his 2000ad work was an enormous blow to him, one that he took a long time to recover from. She was still extremely angry about the way she felt he had been treated by 2000ad fandom at the time, and nothing I said could placate her. I admit that at the time I would've been one of the kids she was referring to. I now feel quite differently towards his work and even though I don't think it really worked within the pages of 2000ad it has a charm all of it's own. Maturity does come with age.

Unknown said...

Really sorry to hear that about Ron Turner; his work was absolutely terrific (and I was very fond of it as a former reader of TV21/Countdown). I particularly loved his work on Zero X.

I think the problem was never one of quality, but of style; Turner was the pinnacle of an earlier generation of SF comic art, and 2000AD was something new. Seeing him draw Judge Dredd was a bit like seeing young, fit, Heartbreak Hotel Elvis turn up to play at a punk gig - however good he was, he'd still be booed off stage.

For anyone who's interested in seeing Turner at his best, check out these amazing British SF pulp covers he did in the 50's and 60's.