Messages

[Redondo]

Staples started out as an artist whose work I didn't like, improved spectacularly to someone whose work I thought was pretty great - Mad City, Dead Reckoning - and then improved even more to someone whose art is amazing but too realistic for me to be into. I need a bit of weird. Redondo gives good weird.

[Brendan McCarthy]

Brendan McCarthy, and then some. That brief period in the  400s and 500s, when he was popping up semi-regularly, was a definite artistic treat.

So, if Kraken's a Judda, why isn't he 9-foot tall?

[David Roach]

Goddard is a hugely talented artist, but his work doesn't really grab me - I prefer something more stylised. David Roach isn't hugely stylised either, but he did once draw Nemesis the Warlock impaled on a big spike, so he gets the vote.

[Ian Gibson]

I'm going to go Ian Gibson. His high-points - Verdus, Return of the Taxidermist and Halo Jones - are just so inventive and beautifully-realised. Plus, as the Amazing Maze Dumoir demonstrates, no-one can draw women like Gibson. Kennedy is undoubtedly the more consistent artist though - it's blatantly obvious when Gibson's heart is not in it, as parts of Day of the Droids (and the dire Snozzbournes) attest.

Oh dear god. Choosing between Kennedy and Gibson?! I'll... get back to you.

As Dante goes does he leave leave a hole that even Tharg's form of late can't fill.

Less a Dante-shaped hole specifically, more a Robbie Morrison-shaped one in general.

Yes, I rather thought I had. And I suspect I voted against your #2 as well, and he got put out.

I suspect your absolute master is different from my absolute master. At the start of the tournament, when it was discussed whether Carlos should be left out because he'd beat everyone else too easily, I and others said no, keep him in, it won't be so cut and dried. I still think having him in it was the right move, but the idea of voting against him - just about the most beloved of all 2000AD creators - now seems... kind of wrong.

[Cliff Robinson]

Cliff Robinson, though it's unusual that he's only co-created one series for 2000AD. Plenty of good Dredd though.

That was really hard - The Dead Man is one of my favourite things ever. I think I love it even more than Necropolis - and I love Necropolis. There are probably only three people I'd vote for over Carlos - and only one of them has any chance of beating him.

[Carlos]

I love John Ridgway's work - I own several pages of it, including one of his Dead Man covers, and it is stunning stuff.

But...

I can't vote against Carlos yet.

It was in black-and-white O'Neill-o-vision. That annual was the first 2000AD product I ever owned - that introduction to Torque is probably what ignited my life-long love of the Grandmaster!

This tournament has reminded me how good the Biz really is. Over the years, his appeal may have been diluted by the horde of imitators who followed in his wake - some of whom went on to great success once they found their own artistic voices - but it's hard to overstate the impact The Horned God had when it first appeared. It was mind-blowing. The fact that every 2000AD fan now owns it in about 32 different printings shouldn't diminish that.

Filippo is doing lettering and design on some of my stuff too - he is the fulcrum of the British small-press scene!

Mind My vote might have surprised you as well if I'd made one!

More often than not, your vote is the opposite of mine, so I'd assume you'd be Team Jock!