Favourite CLASSIC art droid Round 1 - John Cooper or Dave Gibbons

[Colin YNWA]

Last of the week, let's all breathe over the weekend, cuddle up together and prepare for the hard decisions to come next week.

So here we have two artists who are better known for work outside the Prog. John Cooper in particular, who is famed for his stella run on the brilliant Johnny Red over in Battle - BUT we don't give a fig about that here alas. No sirree Bob, that means nothings as we discuss here only work for Tharg. Dave Gibbons did Watchmen yack, yack yack I DON'T CARE, I'm NOT INTERESTED. Its work for Tharg and Tharg alone, so trying to make latter Dan Dare acceptable, sure we can discuss that. Becoming one of the pre-eminent creators of modern time - Pfft. 

Alas we still have to pick our favourite and to do so just pop the name of the art droid you'd most like to go through to Round 2, but please add anything else you'd like to say as well.

John Cooper - more info

Or

Dave Gibbons - more info

This one will close and be counted on the morning of Monday 16th November.

What the hell is all this? Find out more about the Art Droid Tourneys

Whose in the two different tourneys?

Entrants in the Current Art Droids Tourney

Entrants in the Classic Art Droids Tourney

Rules for what they are worth

Anything else just ask and I'll make something up.

[Greg M.]

Dave Gibbons created Rogue Trooper, who, whatever the merits of the story and its repeated reboots, remains the most visually iconic 2000AD character of all time, next to Dredd. (Yes, probably beating Johnny.) That's down to Dave.

[broodblik]

Dave Gibbons

[matty_ae]

 
     GIBBO

[Bolt-01]

Dave Gibbons

[rogue69]

John Cooper

[Magnetica]

I suspect this might be fairly one sided.

Clear favourite for me: Dave Gibbons.

Again another droid who should have done far more for the Prog than he did.

[ming]

Dave Gibbons, no question.  One of the real heavy hitters of early 2000AD and despite having done almost nothing for Tharg since about Prog 300 he's undeniably one of those foundational artists that contributed so much to 2000ADs success.

[Tomwe]

Davey Davey Dave!

[Magnetica]

Following my earlier vote for Dave Gibbons, a word on John Cooper. To me he is an artist from a different, earlier era and he was old school even in 1977. He is undoubtedly a fine artist and a very good story teller, but his work always looked like it was from a different place compared to the punk ethos of the likes of McMahon.

[Colin YNWA]

Defo see that point, but look at his work in Battle - its superb and seems entirely in place there in a way that I don't think it fits quite so well in Tooth.

Which might actually speak to you point come to think of it!

[AlexF]

John Cooper is super, but he's really only worked on one strip for Tharg that actually suited his talents, and that's Armitage - for me the only artist to live up to the original Sean Phillips run. But it's still only an OK strip.

For their 2000AD work alone, Dave Gibbons wins all the ribbons.

[Link Prime]

Dave Gibbons.

[SmallBlueThing(Reborn)]

Gibbons. Though sadly his best work is elsewhere.

SBT

[TordelBack]

Cooper was a treasure, but despite Armitage the work of his I liked best was outside of 2000AD: One-Eyed Jack was just a great strip in all of its many homes (which I'm not allowed to take into consideration).

Gibbons likewise makes the biggest splash in a larger pond, but I could go on for hours about the genius of his Ro-Busters and Rogue Trooper, even Dr. Dibworthy. But I won't, because one strip is enough to earn my vote here: Chronocops. This was like nothing I'd ever seen, it looked like a Mad Magazine strip but you could read it over and over again and see something new every time.  And I'd never even heard of Dragnet!

So Dave Gibbons it is.