2000 AD Covers Uncovered: Stewart K Moore’s Portals & Black Goo cover for Prog 2347 says “Keep Britain Human”
31st August 2023
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!
Here, we’re going back a few weeks to Prog 2347 and Stewart K. Moore’s black and red cover for the finale of the first series of Portals & Black Goo by John Tomlinson and Eoin Coveney.
Stewart was full of apologies for delivering it a bit late, but, as always with his Covers Uncovered, it’s eminently forgivable as it’s another great read and a wonderful insight into the creative process. So don’t worry Stewart, we all forgive you and can’t wait to see more art in the Prog from you!
The cover here was very much part of a set of two, as he not only did the cover for the final episode of Portals & Black Goo but also did the cover to the series opener (you can read that epic Covers Uncovered, including videos of the process, here).
So, let’s let Stewart tell you all about putting together the cover to Prog 2347…
STEWART K MOORE: This one, like the last one, was a pleasure because it bookends the story Portals and Black Goo. Not a wraparound this time but this is the sister cover to the previous one, Portals and Black Goo’s opening and closing covers, the first a mad scene and the last a quiet one. In both cases we see Nona and she is the focus of the latter cover too.
Tharg’s brief was basically a description of what you see here with Nona on a bench at the centre. The wine glass suggesting it could be wine or blood, (in fact it’s certainly blood!) and some of that blood is dripping down her chin.
I don’t think I have any video recording of the drawing underway for this one. But for that kind of thing see my previous Portals Covers Uncovered (again, here.)
I wanted her seated ‘hen toe’d’ so to speak. A typically punk style that you would see ‘back in the day’ in which the punk sits with knees together and toes pointed in. But It didn’t look good. My failing, I didn’t like what I produced.
So instead I gave her a more dominant position, with her feet spread out. ‘man-spreading’ you might call it. It’s a very dominant and confident position.
I have a bit of a bugbear about exploitative images of female characters, if out of character, that is. If it’s a sexual scene, that’s fine. If the character is a vampire or somehow it’s in her character to be overtly sexual, that’s ok too.
But I must admit when I see Judge Anderson on patrol with her zipper and décolletage on display it pisses me off. She’s an officer of the law for grud’s sake! It’s always annoyed me out of context and context is key. It seems a cheap way to win eyes if it’s random like that.
But here I made a decision that might look like I was doing that very thing. I made sure she was in the dark (vampires aren’t much for the light), she’s wearing dark clothing and in partial shadow, so she is almost a silhouette. She’s also a vampire and so, maybe there’s some room for the vampish confidence. I hope I got it right.
Characters staying in character is vital, especially if you do make a decision to break character, it’s just so much more powerful if you’ve been strict about their behaviour and this really comes into its own when they are contrasted with very different character types.
Here are two examples of female characters together. The first a rocket launch sequence in which you’ll see that one catches the eye of the King and his mistress notices the glances and isn’t happy.
The second they shoot side by side.
Thanks to Stewart for sending that along, it doesn’t matter that it was late, it’s just great to hear all about the thought processes behind making the art. Stewart’s fabulous cover to 2000 AD Prog 2347 is still available in the 2000 AD web shop.
Portals & Black Goo ran in 2000 AD Progs 2340 to 2347 and there’s interviews with Eoin Coveney here and John Tomlinson here all about it.
If you want to see more and read more from Stewart, you can go look at his Covers Uncovered pieces for the 2000 AD Encyclopaedia, Prog 2179, Prog 2239, Prog 2240, and Megazine 440, and the sort-of Covers Uncovered for his very special poster in the 2020 Sci-Fi Special here. Then there’s an interview with Stewart here for the 2022 Judge Dredd: Ascension Day strip. There’s also a two part Covers Uncovered all about the cover to the recent John Wagner and Colin MacNeil Surfer collection here and here. It’s a meditation on art, pitching, and why failure is a good thing sometimes and it’s typically great reading from him.
And of course, to see his work inside 2000 AD, you should have a look at his Defoe: The Divisor series in print or digital in 2000 AD 2150 to 2161.
Follow him on Twitter and Instagram, see what he does here at Lambiek, and buy all his works including The Tragedie Of Macbeth and the quite magnificently wonderful and completely out there MK-Ultra: Sex, Drugs & The CIA – the collection comes out in Oct 2023 from Clover Press –As I’ve told you before, it’s a blistering look at one of the most secretive and controversial government experiments in history, the tale of the CIA’s mind control program and its use of hallucinogenics, and is a stunning work of comics gazing deep into the dark side of US intelligence.
Now, finally, a little reminder of the cover Stewart did for that very first episode of Portals & Black Goo…
