Comics

2000 AD Covers Uncovered: Lee Milmore gets his first cover for Prog 2344 – ‘A possessed meat machine with an HR Gieger vibe’

9th 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!

This week, we have a debutant on the cover of 2000 AD Prog 2344 – Lee Milmore. It’s a nightmarish cover to announce the beginning of the Tharg’s 3Riller: Maxwell’s Demon, written by David Barnett and drawn by Milmore.

Lee Milmore first caught the eye of Tharg with his win at the 2000 AD & Thought Bubble talent contest in 2022 and since then he’s appeared in the Prog with the Future Shock: Relict, (Prog 2279) written by his fellow 2022 winner, Honor Vincent.

Maxwell’s Demon is the follow-up to Barnett & Milmore’s first collaboration, another 3Riller, The Crawly Man, in Progs 2297-2299. Barnett and Milmore took us into the pastoral folk horror of sleepy English villages, where horrors lie behind the quaint customs. We met young Caris, who was going to be sacrificed by her village until she was saved by the itinerant magician Herne and his dog Shuck. Caris turned out to be a powerful summoner and left the village after setting a demon on the village elders. Now, in Maxwell’s Demon, we return to catch up with them as Herne is attempting to exorcise an infomancy engine.

It’s more of the same from Barnett and Milmore and all introduced by a suitably nightmare-inducing cover from Milmore. For a first cover, that’s a beauty.

We’ll get into the making of the cover in a moment, but first I had to ask Lee what it meant to get his very first 2000 AD cover…

LEE MILMORE: Wow, it’s staggering. I’m on the cover of 2000AD. I always dreamed of being a 2000AD artist, not a comic book artist you understand, a 2000AD artist!

Most of my art heroes were/are in those hallowed pages and also, on the cover. And now I am. I don’t think deep down in my bones I ever thought this would happen.

So I feel very fortunate and just really fulfilled by this moment. Don’t get me wrong, it comes with a big dollop of cringe, I mean my cover followed Dave Taylor’s…and as Wayne and Garth were prone to say – I’m not worthy.

Wait, don’t tell Tharg I said that. I am worthy and please can I do another soon. Ahem.

We won’t mention it to TMO Lee. And we think this cover and the work you’re doing on the inside definitely shows us all you’re more than worthy!!

Okay, now it’s onto just how you made the cover…

LEE MILMORE: This cover came about while I drew part 1 of Maxwell’s Demon. David (Barnett) described a possessed meat machine with an HR Gieger vibe.

While I designed this Cronenburgian horror, the cover image just appeared in my mind – pretty much directly lifted from the strip itself.

Lee’s talking about this bit of horror in the first part of Maxwell’s Demon…

LEE MILMORE: I thought if we pulled in close it would be difficult to put your finger on what you were looking at, like most of what the great Kevin O’Neill did. I thought readers may even think it was an ABC warrior or something (although they may also end up being crushed it isn’t, which I didn’t think about until now).

So I made a quick mock-up, roughly painted over the top of the image from the strip. I took a deep breath and sent it over to Tharg to see if he’d deem it worthy. Tharg the decisive came straight back with a yes! I did a sort of embarrassing shimmy around my studio and after several hours was forced to clamp shut my massive gormless grin for fear of the wind changing.

Onto stage 2 and, OH DROKK! Now I actually have to do it – a week’s therapy ensued.

Finally, I was forced from my residency at the therapist with a firebrand, like Frankenstein’s monster. Apparently, ‘no they couldn’t do it for me, and I’d just have to put on my big droid pants and get on with it”

I went back to my drawing and copied it into its own cover document and examined it. I’d decided that, to make my life more difficult, I would paint it on paper with Acrylic Gouache and that I’d print out the lines as the base for the painting.

As I was going to do an analogue piece, I checked the drawing for rubbishness. What I found was it was a bit wonky. Don’t examine it too hard and you’ll retain a shred of respect for me.

So I threw some construction lines over the image and made it more symmetrical which was important for an image like this close in on the cover. Less so in the maelstrom of black ink from a greater remove.

I’d decided to show a little more of the Infomancy Engine and wanted those lamprey mouths reaching out at the viewer, so scratched them in. Then I dropped the black lines into a light sepia that would easily disappear under the paint.

On to stage 3. I printed it out onto watercolour paper (a heavy stock) and stretched it onto a board.

You can see my trademark sloppy workmanship here – when other artists post their stretched paper the tape is always immaculate, mine looks like the wrinkled old skin of the hands that type this essay. Also note the way the printer ink is water soluble, which shows up my tears…so scruffy (sob).

Stage 4 is painting. I just want to get as much paint onto the canvas as quickly as possible now.

If you dwell too long I find you start to doubt and lose energy for what you’re doing. So I spend a day just blocking in, picking up detail using a Prussian blue.

I also rough in the tumour veins that grow from the machine and the exposed fleshy brain. But no attempt at rendering at this stage. I know I want the engine to burn internally so I also lay in a little yellow which I also draw up into the skull/bone parts.

Stage 5 – Once the rough blocking in is complete I just get on with painting, rendering the forms establishing the sickly lighting and fighting with the notion that it needs to look polished but it also needs to look like a painting. One day I’ll get that balance right.

Stage 6. I scan the drawing using my trusty A3 scanner and, in Photoshop, finalise the image. You can see the difference that the scanner makes to the colour, the other pictures were just via my phone.

I add a dark halo around the circumference of the Infomancy Engine. I work into the fiery insides to bring a better glow and add just a little steam. I think I sharpened up a few lines too.

I think I’m happy.

I send it over to the Nerve Centre and Tharg doesn’t send back an order to visit Mek Quake. Phew…first cover in.

And then I wait for publication. I’m very busy but it’s in my head all the time. And now that time is all but here.

I wish I could be cool about it, but it’s 2000AD, the cover of 2000AD. Hope I’m allowed back.

And most of all I hope you like it.

Lee Milmore there – hoping you all like his first cover. We think you will. Heck, we’re sure you will, nothing like a huge, terrifying fear machine to leap off the shelves!

Our thanks to Lee for sharing with us this hugely important moment – and congratulations to him once more for a debut cover!

You can find 2000 AD Prog 2344 from anywhere The Galaxy’s Greatest is sold, including the 2000 AD web shop from 9 August.

For more from Lee Milmore, do go back and read his interview (with Honor Vincent) about that very first 2000 AD strip, Relict, here. And of course, go look at his website and follow him on Twitter.