Techno-Babble

This week Corel Painter wins the Genuine Marvel No-Prize for Most Unsavoury-sounding Dialog Box:

Dredd Again, Again

Pencils from Judge Dredd: Time's Squared, the latest part of our Time Traveller sequence.
Judge Dredd © 1977, 2007 Rebellion/2000AD.
Herbert George Sewell created by Ian Edginton & me.

Some actual stuff about comics this time; much to my delight, I'm working on Judge Dredd once again. It's a one-off story written by Ian Edginton, another instalment in the occasional adventures of our unfortunate time traveller H.G. Sewell.

In 2004's Tempus Fugitive, Sewell arrives in Mega-City One from the nineteenth century and is busted by Dredd after testing positive for sugar, tobacco and caffeine. Things take a turn for the worse for him in Time Again (2005), when two of his future selves come back in time to bust him out of jail; Dredd not only defeats them but goes back in time to seize the original Sewell before he can build his time machine. The story ends up with four Sewells in the iso-cubes, one of them a hideous cyborg and one a brain in a tank!

In this story, the four escape from the cubes to seek revenge on Dredd. The story takes in various periods from Dredd's past (so I get to draw lots of cool stuff from my childhood) plus a there are nods to Doctor Who and even The Goodies :-)

Judge Lola from Tempus Fugitive (left) and with her new hairdo in the forthcoming Time's Squared (right).
Judge Dredd & Judge Lola © 2004, 2007 Rebellion/2000AD.

I also get to draw a favourite character of mine, the obscure but divine Judge Lola, who first appeared in Tempus Fugitive. I like Lola because she's un-typical for a strip like Dredd; she's a woman, she's black and, most importantly, she's quite stocky. There is, after all, no reason why all female judges should look like swimwear models...

Scarlet Traces: The Great Game Out

Ian tells me he's sighted copies of the Scarlet Traces: The Great Game collection out in the wild. Pity they couldn't have arrived in time for Bristol...

One Year On

"Hurrah!"

Amidst the various bits and bobs of daily life, I forgot to note the first anniversary of this blog last Sunday (10th June). Sitemeter tells me that the count for the number of visits stands at 19,210, which, given that I didn't install the meter until a few weeks after starting the blog, and also that I lost the meter for a few weeks when I first switched to Blogger Beta, suggests a true figure for the first year of over 20,000, something I'd never have believed when I started out.

Thanks to everyone whose contributions have enlivened these pages, and hope to hear more from you in the coming year.

The Adventures Of Massimo Belardinelli Across The Third Dimension

Eric Moore's model of a Biog Living Axe, based on a design by Massimo Belardinelli from Dan Dare, 2000AD, 1977.

Earthlet Eric Moore sent me some pictures of his model of the Biog Living Axe from the Belardinelli Dan Dare pages I posted a while ago. I found his perspective on Belardinelli's work fascinating: "I always loved the yuckiness of the aliens, but it wasn't till I went to make one in 3D and had to study the anatomy of them that I really appreciated what he (Belardinelli) came up with."

Eric Moore's Martian from H.G. Wells' War Of The Worlds

Eric also sent me a photo of this diorama of a Martian from Wells' War Of The Worlds (above). He says he went back to basics and worked directly from Wells' own descriptions of the creatures in the novel, but where the descriptions were ambiguous, I'm flattered to say he referred to my Martian design from the Scarlet Traces series (largely for the wide spacing of the eyes).

Left: My Martian design from the Scarlet Traces series.

The Return Of The Master

No, not a reference to upcoming events on Doctor Who, but to the great rejoicing here in the Cupboard of Doom to see Mick McMahon back working for Rebellion. First sighting was last month, with his Angel Gang cover for the Judge Dredd Megazine #258. I have to confess that for a moment I thought they'd found a new school-of-McMahon artist who was doing a pastiche of his later work, before twigging that it was the man himself and that his style and technique has evolved yet again. Yet more delightful, he's done a Dredd for this week's 2000AD (Prog 1539).

Cover for the Judge Dredd Megazine #258, May 2007. Art by Mick McMahon, © 2007 Rebellion.

For those of you too young to remember the early 80's, Mike McMahon (as he was then) was the defining stylist for 2000AD in general and Judge Dredd in particular, taking Carlos Ezquerra's original lithe, skull-helmetted character and transforming him into the wok-helmetted, big-chinned, big-booted galoot we all know and love today. From 1977 to 1983, McMahon's drawing style evolved radically; starting as an Ezquerra clone, he found a scratchy, organic style that was all his own (Cursed Earth, Judge Cal), before moving into a more rectilinear phase (Judge Child, Block Mania), and then a looser, hatched approach with Slaine.
Since leaving 2000AD he's manifested at least four more distinct phases: a more rectilinear colour marker style (The Last American, Muto-Maniac), a minimalist geometric style (Batman: Legends Of The Dark Knight), a more organic minimal style (Tattered Banners) and a highly-rendered black & white style (Batman, A.B.C. Warriors). This broad banding doesn't begin to do justice to the level of invention McMahon showed in developing his drawing style over the years; each band would show an evolutionary development from strip to strip, and he was willing to dig deep; his fundamental approach to drawing could change from style to style.

Unlike most artists, who figure our a way of doing things early on and then refine that for the rest of their careers, Mick McMahon has constantly striven to do something new; in that way he's similar another great favourite of mine, Alberto Breccia. Both their work is constantly fresh and exciting.

Judge Dredd: Shaggy's Big Shoot by Robbie Morrisson & Mick McMahon
Judge Dredd created by John Wagner & Carlos Ezquerra, © 2007 Rebellion/2000AD

That can work against him; while McMahon helped to define the whole gritty 2000AD style, he refuses to allow himself to be limited by his early work. In the past ten years, he's cut out the gritty rendering and solid blacks that still characterise the work of those he's influenced (most notably Cam Kennedy and Henry Flint). When he does return to Dredd, it's with a sort of cheerful disrespect for reader expectation; the Dredd you get is the one he wants to draw, like it or lump it, and they're the wildest versions of the character yet seen. But the result is that he's only worked for 2000AD a handful of times since the early 1980's.

Personally, I love his approach, and I hope we see more of it in the future; I imagine Tharg may well get a few complaints from the more conservative Dredd fans, though.

Mick McMahon's website at mickmcmahon.onlinefolio.biz

McMahon's new technique seems to be based around scanning pencil drawings and upping the contrast to create black outlines; he then computer-colours it himslef, probably in Photoshop. This approach seems to come from work he's done for the games industry; check out his new website to see examples (thanks to G.N. Reid for this parish for supplying the URL).