2000 AD Covers Uncovered – Last Rites For The Zombie Army
16th January 2020
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 and the Judge Dredd Megazine!
Judge Dredd Megazine #416 is out this week with the first episode of new series Zombie Army: Last Rites iZombie writer Chris Roberson and Italian artist Andrea Mutti (Infinite Dark). Richard Bruton chatted to Andrea Mutti about his cover marking the start of the five-part series.
Written by Chris Roberson (iZombie) and drawn by Mutti, it’s full-on zombie war-time action and adventure down in Southern France, all under Mutti’s cover…
He starts by telling us that this was one of those cover images that, unusually, came really quickly…
Preparing for a cover is, for me, the most complex phase of a book … summarizing a story in a single image while maintaining its tension and atmosphere, is always a bit complicated! In the case of Zombie Army, however, it was almost immediate!
I didn’t know I had to do the cover too, but during the processing of the pages I had an idea of a possible cover that, yes, was very close to the ideas that Matt Smith suggested to me (great editor that I really thank for the wonderful opportunity!)
These are those extraordinary coincidences that make me love my job, those strange chemicals that arise spontaneously when you share a passion!
The first step for a cover is to create a quick layout that summarizes the basic concept. Once the procedure has been approved, I set about the pencil version that can be more or less detailed.
In this case, realizing that I’d be painting with watercolours, I looked for a fresher approach, I didn’t want to weigh down things with overly charged inks and with too many details that, once everything was painted with watercolour, would have been too dense and would have suffocated the colour.
With this in mind, I ended up painting the pencils and added black and ink details in a second step. The result, I must say, seemed immediately effective and I then added some details directly with the colours.
I also wanted to get a palette with few colours, I didn’t want a colourful patchwork as it’s still a horror story and I don’t particularly like too colourful illustration. Observing reality, light tends to blend many of the colours, giving a sense of homogeneity and density to real life, making it very balanced. And that’s something I really tried to achieve here.
Hopefully, all is well. The cover is what you see, and thankfully hasn’t come out too dark in the printing phase, something I always fear!
No, not too dark at all. A cover that really sells the new strip and one Andrea can be proud of. As always, thanks to Andrea for taking the time to take us through his cover. Now, grab your guns, it’s zombie killin’ time boys and girls!