you have been judged! [meeting comics legend john cooper]
today i met with comic artist legend john cooper who we’re working with on a project. truth be told, he’s a bit of a hero to me. partly because i was enjoying his art in such as battle long before i bothered checking the artist’s credit on comics, but mostly for his work on judge dredd.
as a child, buying a comic full of tales of action and bravery of world war II from the railway station newsagent was as much part of the family holiday as the essential bucket and spade purchase once we’d arrived. cooper’s dynamic work on the johnny red strip is probably his most iconic, and with reason – cooper’s illustrations jumped off the page and still look vibrant today. looking back at old copies of battle, cooper’s work is often in a class of its own.
but the comic strip that really got me thinking about visual storytelling as a teen was judge dredd. cooper drew the first ever judge dredd story, but censorship and the resulting rewrite meant that it didn’t get published until issue 5. john told me today that the original story had dredd shooting a motorist whose car was spewing pollution in mega city one [the future reality where the dredd stories are set] but had to be toned down. and people think this government’s green car tax plans are extreme…
john’s artwork recently returned to the pages of the judge dredd megazine with the armitage strip and he says there’s more to come… you heard it here first comic fans. because there was a fairly radical shift in comic art in the 90′s to a more painterly style, especially on the pages on 2000AD, john’s artwork, still rooted in his classic 70′s style but with a funky informal edge, looks full of energy and fun – it’s no wonder that the web’s comic fan sites are cheering his return to the UK newsstands.
anyway, john politely didn’t pass judgment on my scrappy thumbnail sketches and i can’t wait to see him transform our story with his art.
No related posts.
Sir, I must protest.
Some weeks have now past since my google search
for ‘an affluent metrosexual urbanite’s pick of the
proms’ directed me to your partnership of electric
angels.
I did indeed find promise that a guide to Henry Wood’s
finest was forthcoming but since then, nothing.
Look sharp man, let’s have your pick before the hole
show’s gone west.