Comics

2000 AD Covers Uncovered: Alex Ronald Heads Back To 1977 For Megazine 469

19th June 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!

We’re off to take a look at the new Judge Dredd Megazine cover now – with the return of zarjaz cover star Alex Ronald and Mega-City 2099, taking us back to the earliest days of Dredd in 2000 AD!

Mega-City 2099 takes us back to the very first Dredd strips in the Prog, with a whole new set of adventures imagined by some of the finest script and art droids with that classic 1977 look and feel!

The new Mega-City 2099 inside Megazine 469 is by Ken Niemand and Conor Boyle, but on the cover this month, giving his very finest classic retro Dredd, we have superstar 2000 AD cover artist extraordinaire… Alex Ronald.

After an initial spell at 2000 AD in the mid-90s, Alex left for a second career in computer graphics, only to find the lure of Tharg too all-powerful, returning with a very different digital style and becoming one of the Mighty One’s specialist cover artists. And speaking of covers, here’s Alex to tell you all about this one…

ALEX RONALD: This cover is based on the Mega City 2099 strips so my first port of call was back to ZBrush to re-work the Dredd model I use for composition...

ALEX RONALD: As you can see from the headshot, the early 70s style helmet is more rounded like a biker helmet and I reworked Dredd’s face to bring it more in line with the early look defined by Carlos Ezquerra and Mike McMahon.

My first draft for the cover was very close to what happens in the featured story, a giant superhuman lifting a Mega City police vehicle above his head and attacking the officers.

I have Dredd checking the pulse of an officer as the giant is reflected in a nearby window.

ALEX RONALD: In the end, I felt this might work okay as a story page panel but didn’t necessarily make a good cover image.

The final cover idea came from a panel from the very first Dredd story, but not the first printed.

Yep… this one in fact, from the master, Carlos Ezquerra…

ALEX RONALD: There’s a great low angle on Dredd drawn by Carlos firing his lawgiver. I based my cover on this but flipping the side so Dredd would be facing the right of the page rather into the spine.

ALEX RONALD: My rough has Dredd on his own but by the time I went to painting up the full-colour image I thought it would add more value to add in the cops who had featured in the story.

Anyway I hope you like it, I had a lot of fun doing this one.

Oh, we like it a lot! A mighty fine retro-inspired cover there from Alex! Thanks so much to Alex for taking the time to send over his art and talk to us about what he did. You can find the new Judge Dredd Megazine, issue 469, on the stands at your local newsagent, comic shop, and on the 2000 AD web shop right now!

If you want to read more about Judge Dredd 2099, we interviewed original series artist, Conor Boyle, here. And as for more from Alex, there’s been plenty of Covers Uncovered from one of 2000 AD’s modern cover specialists… Prog 2191, Prog 2206, Prog 2255, Prog 2294, Prog 2306, Prog 2353, Prog 2365, Prog 2372, and for Megazine 435 and 462.