2000 AD Covers Uncovered: Patrick Goddard Sends Rogue Trooper to Blighty Valley
29th January 2024
Every week, 2000 AD brings you the galaxy’s greatest artwork and 2000 AD Covers Uncovered takes you behind-the-scenes with the headline artists responsible for our top cover art – join bloggers Richard Bruton and Pete Wells as they uncover the greatest covers from 2000 AD!
This week, it’s art droid Patrick Goddard giving us the rundown on putting together the cover for the new Rogue Trooper: Blighty Valley cover.
Garth Ennis and Patrick Goddard breathed new life into Rogue Trooper with the 13-part Blighty Valley in 2000 AD Progs 2326 to 2339 and now it’s getting its well-deserved collection, out on 2 July 2024. You can pre-order the collection now!
There really was no one better to get deep into the sci-fi war story of the blue-skinned Genetic Infantryman than Ennis. And in Goddard, we have an artist evoking memories of classic Rogue Trooper artists such as Dave Gibbons and Steve Dillon, someone bringing both intense action and a deeply human aspect to this incredible tale.
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Created by Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons and debuting in 2000 AD in 1981, Rogue Trooper is the last of the G.I.s – Genetically-engineered Infantry – fighting in the brutal war between his Souther creators and their deadly enemies the Norts. Engineered to be able to survive the poisoned badlands of Nu Earth, Rogue and his fellow G.I.s found that the real danger came from one of their own and he’s now a lone soldier on the hunt for the ‘Traitor General.’ His only help in this final mission comes from three fallen comrades, whose personalities are encoded onto bio-chips inserted into his helmet, ‘Helm’, backpack, ‘Bagman’, and rifle, ‘Gunnar’.
Blighty Valley is set at Night’s Horizon, the annual event where Nu Earth’s orbit carries it closest to a nearby black hole. The Norts call it Zvartchvintern; the first settlers knew it as Lightfall. Things have a reputation for going a little… screwy around this time. Now, Rogue and his bio-chip buddies are about to experience those effects first-hand.
So, here’s Patrick with the images and a few words about putting together the cover for the Blighty Valley collection…
PATRICK GODDARD: ‘My original brief was to have some sort of split image for the cover, showing Old and Nu Earth with Rogue taking centre stage. I drew out a couple of ideas…’
Actually, a couple of ideas ends up as six ideas…
But those are a little small, so here they are blown up for you, all the better to see the wonderful line to Patrick’s work…
But that’s nothing like the final cover, right? Well noticed dear reader.
What actually happened was that Patrick showed the ideas to Garth and, well, let’s hand you back to Patrick here…
PATRICK GODDARD: Garth suggested another route, having Rogue with the Blackhole prominent behind him come across the devastation of the British and German bodies all merged into one with the landscape.
Not just that, but Garth got his artistic head on and sent Patrick a thumbnail idea of what he was suggesting…
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So, with that in mind, Patrick worked up another rough…
And that worked, except, there was just one more change needed –
PATRICK GODDARD: Rogue was originally going to be smaller, but they wanted him with a larger presence for the cover which I can understand.
So, with the cover layout decided on, it was time to head to pencil stage…
Next came inks and tones and effects…
And that’s it! Complete and done. Just one more stage…
PATRICK GODDARD: Then it was off to Dylan to work his magic with the colours!
And Dylan Teague did indeed work his magic with the Blighty Valley cover! As always!
Thank you so much to Patrick for sending along the art there. You can find Rogue Trooper: Blighty Valley wherever Ghafflebette comics are sold from 2 July 2024, including the 2000 AD web shop.
For more from Patrick, there’s plenty to catch up on – Covers Uncovered for Progs 2185, 2205, 2219, 2244, and 2264; we interviewed him about Judge Dredd: Special Relationship (with Rob Williams) here, and about Judge Dredd: Unearthed (with Williams and Chris Weston) here. There’s also a 2000 AD Thrill-Cast here with Patrick, Garth Ennis, and Keith Burns talking Battle Action, and Patrick talks to Molch-R in the 2000 AD Lockdown Tapes here.
And remember to follow Patrick on Twitter and Instagram.
And to finish with, as a bonus… the opening pages from Rogue Trooper: Blighty Valley…
