Messages

Coming up with an unranked Top Ten (or Five, or Three) is so much easier than these last few rounds...  All-in-all, though, I have to go for Carlos.  The weight of all his Dredd work (well, most of it) and the classic-era Strontium Dog (and the rest; Stainless Steel Rat is another gem, and then there's Fiends...) is just too hard to vote against, and in voting for Carlos firstly over O'Neill and now McMahon there's really no way I can alter course in the final, whoever else gets there... 

Following numerous recommendations here, we've been getting stuck into Black Sails recently (now half-way through Season 2).  For reasons that are very much in-your-face, the missus and I have started calling it by a different name, though:

Tits Ahoy!
With the Occasional Cock.

I flipped a coin and it came down favouring Phil Winslade, so he gets the vote (the only way I could really choose).

Vote for me or mister nice guy below will get you:

I'm surprised you didn't use an actual Kev O'Neill image to illustrate your point but hey

Probably the two I find it most difficult to choose between; I was dreading this decision.  Kev O'Neill is such a legendary artist and, page-for-page, the artist I've spent most time absorbed by.  His early Nemesis especially grabbed me by the brain and never let go, for which I'll always be grateful.  There's so little separating my Top Three - O'Neill, McMahon and Ezquerra - that it's just painful to rank one above the other since they've all done so much, so well.  In the end though it can't be anyone other than Carlos who gets my vote here.  My journey with 2000AD began with Starlord and the reason for that was Strontium Dog and Carlos, and he deserves every bit of praise that's heaped upon him.  There are just too many incredible stories to his name and the level of consistency and productivity he maintained is just mindblowing.

Simon Fraser

Very tough since Massimo delivered such incredible Thrill but I have to go with Mick McMahon - astonishing, restless artistic talent and design ability coupled with innate heavyweight storytelling chops.  I'd vote for Mick on the basis of Sky Chariots alone.

[Cam]

Exactly what Jayzus just said, although you could add in The Taxidermist,  The Falucci Tape, The Suspect, Cardboard City, The Big Sleep and Adrian Cockroach into the 'perfect' list.

So much as I love Ewins, it's always Cam for me.

Add in The Warlord and Finger of Suspicion and we're getting there...

Lovely work there, Pictsy.  Out of curiosity, what size is this?

D'Israeli for me - a tough choice but we're at that stage now...

Has to be Cam for me (and a nice choice of Rogue page for the example here - the first page of original art I bought!).

Colin MacNeil (but if it was limited to covers I'd go for Cliff).

Ron Smith!

I prefer Gibbons out of these two. I believe it's pronounced Gibbons.

I pronounced it Boll-and when I met him briefly at UKCAC '88, as in "are you Brian Bolland?".  The look on his face spoke volumes and I think he still remembers this one.  Ah, the folly of youth! 

2213 showed up yesterday (2212 came just after New Year); still no 2211 or 2214 or 2215 but I'll give it a few weeks before bugging subs about it as it's down to the postal service and I imagine the issues are just floating around there somewhere. 

Aquila came through a few days ago, luckily but we haven't had The Phoenix for weeks and the boys are getting a bit impatient about that; just one of those things and not exactly the end of the world (yet).