Comics

2000 AD Covers Uncovered – Andy Clarke, Sinister-less Dexter, and the world’s worst car… it’s Prog 2290

11th July 2022

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 the return of Andy Clarke with his third cover in the past few months for Tharg, this time with the cover of 2000 AD Prog 2289, out wherever you get your Thrill Power on 13 July.

The veteran art droid first of all wants to point out that getting three covers in a few months is absolutely all on merit and categorically denies that he owes The Mighty One many, many years’ worth of art in payment for all that droid-oil he’s been consuming to get him through the day.

Right, that over and done with – time to let Andy tell us all about putting together his latest 2000 AD cover, featuring one-half of the greatest gunshark team in Downlode, Raymone Dexter, currently starring in Malice in Plunderland by writer Dan Abnett and artist Tazio Bettin.

ANDY CLARKE: Sinister Dexter was my first comics work, so getting the opportunity to come up with a cover for the series again was fantastic. I always had a lot of time for these two – Dex in particular – and even though we’re missing one-half of the partnership as things currently stand, it was nice to have Carrie there on this one.

Dan Abnett was always really great, really generous with support and encouragement. Not being burdened by an abundance of confidence, when he seemed to like what I was doing on the SinDex stories I worked on, it was a real boost.

For this one, Tharg had a very clear brief, so it was fairly straightforward to come up with a sketch that got the point across.

The tricky part was reffing the car and getting the guns to look right – I don’t find them all that easy to draw, and they don’t seem to get any easier the more I do them. I could’ve gone with one of Dex’s guns doing that recoil thing too – where it pulls back and you briefly see the inner barrel (or whatever it’s called) as it’s fired – but it wouldn’t have really added anything . . . and I didn’t have the patience to sit like a lemon trying to get it to look right.

Breaking in again for just a moment or two and seeing as Andy just mentioned the car – when I first saw the cover I just knew from bitter experience what it was, one of the worst possible cars that’s ever been made, the encapsulation of the crappiness of the British car industry in the 70s and 80s, the abysmal Austin Allegro. I checked on this with Andy, wondering why he had to pick that particular car but he came back with this… ‘Yep, that was all Tazio Bettin,’

Well, that was all too intriguing to leave, so it was off to ask Tazio about it…

TAZIO BETTIN: I’m not a car expert at all, so I asked my father, who definitely knows better. The panel where the Allegro first appears had, in the script, Dexter and Carrie looking at a car (they were in need of transportation), and Carrie commenting it’s a pile of junk.

Tazio Bettin: This prompted me into checking what is a notoriously crappy car. My father suggested some models. The Allegro appears consistently even in Internet rankings of “worst cars of all time”. So in my mind it had to be it, for Carrie’s remark to ring comically indisputable to the reader.

The car does look cheap and ugly, but in a kind of (to me) adorable way. As if it was saying “I’m sorry I’m a terrible car, but at least you can say that I look a little vintage?”

No, sorry Tazio, I’ve driven one. It’s unforgivable awful not adorable. Like driving mud. Badly designed and built mud.

TAZIO BETTIN: Lastly, the number plate. I am disseminating Easter eggs throughout all the comic. I’m sure the readers will have spotted at least some or all of them, and this was a chance I couldn’t pass on. What could such a demure-looking car be saying through it’s plate? Just to up the conicity a little, I went with the philosophical “to be or not to be” spelled on alphanumeric.

Okay… so there you go. The wonders of the artistic process and the lengths they go to, eh?

Now, back to Andy…

ANDY CLARKE: Once the sketch was approved, I tightened it up and put in the car damage in the hope that it looked convincing: what does it really look like if bullets are smacking into a car? Haven’t a clue. Sure there’s reference out there somewhere, but sometimes too much ref makes me tentative. So, it may not be remotely accurate, but it kinda looks okay.

From there, I inked the outlines and only put black in the areas I was sure needed to be black and wouldn’t be better served in grey. With the greytones I try to do all the detailing, after that’s done, the flat colours are added.

Round about here, I thought maybe the suggestion of a background might be a good idea. So I looked for a suitable parking structure to use as a base, did a rough, blocky sketch and placed it in – messing around with the layer options, adding some blur, so it was there, but not drawing too much attention. Keeping the background colour non-specific also helped knock it back. 

To finish off, I changed some of the greys to colour, added gradients and highlights – the bullet sparks and muzzle flashes needed a little more zing and some random dust and dirt spatter was added to beef it all up a bit. Some spray-diffused ink texture for the ground and that, I think, was it.

And that’s it! Thanks so much to both Andy Clarke for telling us all about the latest cover (and to Tazio Bettin for chipping in with a little extra info – even if he’s completely wrong about any redeeming features on the Allegro).

You can get hold of 2000 AD Prog 2290 on 13 July wherever the Galaxy’s Greatest is sold, including the 2000 AD web shop.

And for more Andy Clarke talking about his covers (and paying off that droid oil debt) have a look at the Covers Uncovered for 2000 AD Prog 2287 and Judge Dredd Megazine 444.