2000 AD Online Forum

I'm not sure whether any boarder would even be interested in this piece, but Frank Miller's unused & unloved cover for the Megazine's tenth anniversary is up on eBay. The seller gets a few key facts wrong (commissioned for the 2000th issue of 2000AD?) but it looks like this is actually the original piece.

Any got a couple of thousand, a bottle of Tippex & a black marker? ;-)

Link: Miller does Dredd. Badly.

I guess this piece is something of a hot potato, because this certainly isn't the first time it's been on eBay. Of course, the fact that it's just not that good doesn't help matters. Frankly, I think you'd have to be an oddball to splash out more than $1,500 on it.

I wouldn't pay tuppence for it.

"Done in 2003"??????

Told you the details were sketchy. AFAIK:

This one is from 2003, done while Frank Miller was working on Sin City - Bollocks. The piece was supposed to adorn the cover of the 10th anniversary issue of the Meg, in 2000.

This cover was made for the 2000th issue of the magazine '2000 AD' - Heh. Or not.

This piece was sold by the publisher from the magazine - As I understand it, the Meg never bought the piece and it was auctioned off by Miller for a comic fund of some sort.

I think it's genuine enough, but it sounds like the seller just doesn't have a clue about the origin of the piece.

This unused cover was donated by Miller to the Comic Book Defense Fund, who then flogged it on Ebay, end of 2000.
I wrote to the seller with details... but do they listen?
R

I've had the image on the '79 site for years and at least because of it we got Lenny Zero.

This replaced it as the cover IIRC

I'm still hoping that one day I'll get to draw the Dredd strip where I can have him standing in front of a shop with the enormous boot shaped sign. The sign reads: "Frank Miller's Cobblers"

If you're an artist and get the chance first go ahead and go it.

ADE

I quite like it. I wouldn't spend anything on it because I never spend money on comic art, but that looks okay to me

Horses for courses, I guess. To me, it looks like those prints you could buy from Quality Comics in the 1980s, clearly painted by people who didn't have the first clue about Dredd.

Miller's image does have some things going for it: the O'Neill-like perp, the semi-amusing pin-cushion-Dredd thing, some of the details. However, the stubble is totally not Dredd?a stickler for shaved faces?and the legs/boot are appalling. It might have worked cropped, but it looks unfinished to me. Frankly, what it was replaced with was more effective?at least as far as a cover goes.

It is as you say, horses for courses.  I think there have been other stubbly Dredds - doesn't Cam Kennedy do one?

Gee I like this board. I mean it. On some boards I could name, I'd be savaged for being 'wrong' about that picture

yours gratefully

From David Bishop's blog on the matter:

"Hmph. He saw you coming!"

The Judge Dredd Megazine celebrated its tenth anniversary in the year 2000 AD. To mark the occasion, then editor Andy Diggle saved up his editorial pennies and commissioned US comcis legend Frank Miller to do the cover art for the birthday issue. Andy had already moved on to editing 2000 AD by the time the picture arrived and I was back in charge of the Megazine as freelance editor. By chance, Dredd's co-creator John Wagner happened to be in the office when the Frank Miller cover image arrived. I opened the package up in John's presence - his response was the comment used as the headline for this blog posting.

After some back and forth via email, Miller withdrew permission for us to publish his work - but we didn't have to pay him, so that was the end of that. [We never actually had the art in our possession, only a full size print of it.] Some time later Miller put his original art up for auction, with all proceeds going to an extremely worthy cause, the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund. I think it sold for at least a thousand US dollars, so some good emerged from the whole episode. I figured I'd never seen the thing again.

I was wrong.

Link: David Bishop speaks!

I must admit, I kind of like it for what it is- but it's not really 'Dredd'.

I still can't figure out what that's supposed to be angling down from his left hand down to the right corner of the page. Is that his other leg?

Style's nice. But it's a bit shit really.

"I still can't figure out what that's supposed to be angling down from his left hand down to the right corner of the page. Is that his other leg?"

Apparently it is....

for me, it is the legs that make it.... so bizarre...

iT CREEPS ME OUT...sorry CAPS off...

The legs look like they belong to another artist...

Eight links on the chain!  Eight links!  There should be seven!  Burn it!  Buuuuurn it!

...

I also rather like it, in a caricaturish sort of way.  I'd expect to find it in a newspaper accompanying an indignant article about police recruits using steroids, or about the Erosion Of Human Rights, or blah blah blah.

But as an iconic cover-image showcasing a recognisable character, it just doesn't do the job.  As has been implied, it looks a little as though Mighty Miller drew the top half then gave the remains to his McMahon-obsessive midget sidekick JOHANN*, who blatted-on a fuckload of stubble, some jaunty flicknives, and some novelty Plastic-Man legs.

An oddity.  And probably worth every penny, as such.






*May Not Actually Exist.

When you look at a close-up of the chin it looks like Miller got board and just started scribbling in lines at random

Another competition - New Legs for Dredd. I like that image, kind of, from the waist up. Anyone want to improve it from the waist down? Or come up with something weirder?

Half law machine - half flying spaghetti manster would be nice.

And the stick/leg always makes me think Dredd looks like a Mr Punch puppet.

Am i the only one who thinks the perp looks strangely like Frank Miller himself? And that Dredd's about to kiss him?

If so, what does that say about Frank Miller?!?

In many ways it's a shame Freud isn't alive and reading 2000A.D.

The thing is, it's not as if it would've taken Miller much to alter it so it was passable, as demonstrated by this mega-rushed bodge job...

worst. art. ever.

except maybe for DK2, obviously...

That rush job cover works for me....

I've never really been bothered by the Miller Dredd cover, if nothing else it would have raised the profile of Dredd and 2000ad worldwide, surely no bad thing.

I'm a big Miller fan (DK2 was let down by the colouring, not the art), The Dark Knight Returns is for me the single best comic story I've read. I had never seen anything like it before. The square bound format, the paper stock, the print quality, the art, the colouring... all fantastic, and to my 18 year old brain, mind blowing.

Miller my be travelling up his own arse (his next 'Batman V Osama' tale could well be his shark jumping moment), but for now he amongst the best.

Watchmen may be a better crafted story, and Gibbons art is spectacular, but for pure comic book storytelling The Dark Knight just edges it for me.

In many ways it's a shame Freud isn't alive and reading 2000A.D.

The question would be where would he start??

Link: Get to grips with that!!