The 2000ad art of Mick McMahon

[Le Fink]

This arrived today - it is a stupendous volume with a chunks of Slaine - some Hero's Blood, some Sky Chariots - a fair amount of ABC warriors, a bit of V.C.'s, more Dredd, including more full colour work from the annuals, and several pages of the Last American, which are gorgeous. Here's the contents page:

[Lorenzo]

Oooh, you tease!    Couldn't you show a few pages to keep me going, I've got to wait until Friday for my copy 

[Le Fink]

Not had time until now...

[Lorenzo]

Love it! Thanks. Especially Sláine. 
I'm still waiting for my scheduled delivery sometime between Friday and March.

[Le Fink]

The opacity and colour of the ink on the Slaine scans does vary a bit - somewhat faded on some scans. You can still see what's going on but the affect is lessened a bit. Is this down to the pigment fading over time, which will be down to how the page was stored?

[Lorenzo]

That's unfortunate. A bit of light fading doesn't worry me too much though - shows a bit of character in the art. It is a bit odd though. I would have guessed that Mick used India Ink back in the 80's and that is pretty much lightfast unlike all other colour inks which will fade quite a bit if exposed. Maybe he applied the ink quite thinly and you are just 'seeing through' it. The repro would have darkened that up for printing.
Or maybe he used a cheap non permanent ink - need a McMahon expert to tell us.

[pauljholden]

That's unfortunate. A bit of light fading doesn't worry me too much though - shows a bit of character in the art. It is a bit odd though. I would have guessed that Mick used India Ink back in the 80's and that is pretty much lightfast unlike all other colour inks which will fade quite a bit if exposed. Maybe he applied the ink quite thinly and you are just 'seeing through' it. The repro would have darkened that up for printing.
Or maybe he used a cheap non permanent ink - need a McMahon expert to tell us.

I thought mick was in the vanguard of artists using markers (iirc the story goes in Slaine that he used markers and tracing paper to fill in large black areas and when he saw the white bits that had got through then decided he liked them. and I think the art of last American was coloured with markers.

(Could be wrong)

[Lorenzo]

Wow, really? I'm impressed if that's the case. Some of the filling in looks like markers but I would have guessed Rotring pens and ink/brush.

[pauljholden]

Interesting link :
http://adriansalmonart.blogspot.com/2011/06/so-i-planned-to-write-quick-post-to.html

After returning to comics with the THE LAST AMERICAN ( after a being ill) , his work had evolved yet again. Mick has said in interviews that though he wasn't drawing , he  still was in his head. TLA is a tour de force ( go get a copy of the ComX album) if you don't believe me. Pretty grim too. The art has a level of detail not seen in his work before ( okay maybe SLAINE is a contender) , marker pens on watercolour paper with Magic Marker colours were used ( I know I sold him some at a shop).

[pauljholden]

Good interview here too http://homepage.eircom.net/~okku/scifi/mcmahon.htm

McM: Yes, it's to do with materials as well, what's available, I'd started using staedtler projector pens on Bristol Board, they worked really nicely filling in solid blacks on Bristol Board, and then when I was doing Slaine I switched to water-colour paper, I don't know why, and so I started drawing everything with these pens, but it didn't work at all, it was too blobby, but I liked the things I was doing with these pens, but they were to uncontrollable, so I started using Tombo pens.

I dunno what Tombo (could be Tombow) pens are, but I imagine they were an early japanese pigment pen or marker (the thought of using staedtler projection pens makes my skin crawl, but Mike is inhuman.

[Lorenzo]

Really interesting quotes. God, what a barbarian! Staedtler projector pens are a really odd choice, they had a dense but runny ink and I think the biggest was only a 6mm wedge. Not very useful for filling in. I long for the original Magic Markers though - the smell was divine - if a little toxic  They weren't very colourfast either.

[nxylas]

Good to see The Last American getting the prestige treatment, but I wish my inner pedant would shut up for a minute ("It's called The 2000AD Art of Mick McMahon, so why is there non-2000AD art in it?")

[Magnetica]

One thing the Apex edition highlights is, how poor the reproduction is in the Warrior's Dawn collected edition, in places. And it's not just the McMahon pages, but some Belardinelli ones as well. Thinking we now need a high quality edition, like the forth coming Nemesis ones. There's not many things I'd buy yet again to get better reproduction, but early Slaine and early Nemeis definitely fall into that category.

[IndigoPrime]

I just discovered I have a shelf in my office that currently houses Quarter Arcades that is almost the exact height for Apex Editions. Currently, my McMahon Dredd is there. This could... get expensive. (I'm definitely going to get the second McMahon book. Currently mulling over the O'Neill one.)

[Max Headroom]

Would like to echo what Magnetica said about a Definitive Edition of Slaine - hopefully that can be a very well deserved project for the future?