2000 AD Covers Uncovered – Better Late Than Never, INJ Culbard’s Brink Cover For Prog 2272
10th March 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 we’re headed back in time… to 2000 AD Prog 2272 and the wonderful art of INJ Culbard.
Ian’s work on the latest mind-bending, slow-building, completely thrilling, and frankly downright amazing Brink series; Mercury Retrograde is, as you’d expect, superb. When Prog 2272 came out, he was hard at work at the drawing board doing his thing – but he did promise to send along what process material he had – and here it is!
INJ CULBARD: The brief was the protests seen from episode three. I knew I wanted to use the Vovek tattoo on someone’s forehead so I centred that, not to the page but to where the Brink Logo sits above it (in the event any of these covers are used for the collection, because the Brink logo has a circular cut running through it.
Because this already existed as a panel, I just needed to pick a different angle and people it, it was pretty straightforward. So here’s my rough for that.
And here’s the finished piece. Took me ages to get the color on this working right. I went through dozens of iterations (non of which I’ve kept).
Thanks to Ian for taking the time to get this to us. Always such a pleasure to see where the strange thinking behind Brink is going! Brink: Mercury Retrograde is in the Prog right now and it’s a belter!
Make sure you catch up with the whole saga of Brink, written by Dan Abnett, art by INJ Culbard in the four books available. It’s one of the greatest modern series to grace the pages of the Prog, a police procedural with a sci-fi twist, a conspiracy theory for the ages, a stunning bit of graphic fiction!
Buy them here – Brink Book 1, Brink Book 2, Brink Book 3, Brink Book 4.
