Thinking about it, I often like pages or stories showcasing characters with a wild and distinctive design – often this translates to baddies, monsters or weird aliens, but one of 2000AD’s virtues has always been the fact that even the goodies look like baddies!
Arh now you see this is why I posed the question, one which I knew would be almost unanswerable, but one that once answered might spark a thoughtl or feeling in me that helped me get closer to the decision I was struggling with and good old Mr M. has hit on it for me.
See normally I go for moments, or elements of a story. So the Red Seas one I've picked has two Ray Harryhausen monsters fighting, a giant metal warrior and a giant squid, Jack, an important need (and colleague) leaping from a gash in said metal warrior, so we have high action. Its also set at sea, which while so much of Red Seas isn't, any page I was going to own had to be, to underscore its pirate setting. There in one page is Red Seas perfectly encapsulated.
I was never going to get that in a single Skreemer page. There are about 4 moments I've pulled out. All juggling for my affections. Typically my favourite not necessarily a greatly appealing page aside from 3 panels. Then I read Greg's comment and it clicks.
Its a Brett Ewins' page. What does Brett Ewins do better than most. Why create brilliant, monstrous men. Veto is one such man. Most of the pages where Veto is drawn large and monstrous he's wearing this big fur coat and wide brimmed hat, which I think distracts from what makes him such a wonderful design (though its does work in the context of the story as it emphasizes the success he has found). And of course he must be stood at on the edge of that ledge, waiting and tempting and contemplating breaking free of his fate.
So what do I go for. Well this time the design and the monster, in his perfect environment to sum up the main theme of the story. If not a moment that drives the theme(s) forward.
I think I have my answer... which had probably gone now, so I'll be back to fighting over the different moments...
Thanks all for the thoughts.
