Comics

2000 AD Covers Uncovered: Mark Harrison takes us to the movies for Prog 2323 (bring your own popcorn)

17th March 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, another one of those spectacular covers for The OUT from Mark Harrison and another spectacular deep dive into the making of 2000 AD Prog 2323 for Covers Uncovered!

It’s a deliberately cinematic delight, with Mark drawing deep on the old painted film posters that adorned so many walls back in the day – and that, thankfully, are having a bit of a resurgence these days.

MARK HARRISON: Not much to this one, despite the complexity. Now, I may have said this before on another cover… It feels familiar but I can’t recall!

I had always wanted to do a faux film poster for The OUT comic strip in the style of painted posters that I loved (and collected) as a teen. 

The very first film poster I really took notice of was Tom Chantrell’s landscape poster for Star Wars which I saw dominating the London Underground way back in 1977.

God, I would have loved to have had that poster- that size- just filling a bedroom wall! (I currently have a one-sheet version in my kitchen.) 

I’ve since discovered that Chantrell was also responsible for some other great fantasy and science fiction posters (over) selling films like The Land That Time Forgot, Moon Zero Two, and a personal favourite; At the Earth’s Core.  

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Of course, the artist that became synonymous with the montage approach painted movie poster was Drew Struzan. I had a poster of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on my bedsit wall for most of the 80’s. 

Painted posters fell out of fashion with the advent of sterile PhotoShop “floating heads” montages, but have recently made a comeback with directors wanting the same for their films or shows like Suicide Squad or Stranger Things. 

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There was a skill to compositing elements to a movie style poster, to look for patterns or structure you can work around and balance the overall separate elements with. 

One artist I definitely felt inspired by was Noriyoshi Ohrai, a Japanese artist (traditional painter) who came to my attention when I saw his version (and my favourite version) of The Empire Strikes Back film poster. 

His film poster work typified this montage pattern approach. It was so dynamic and layered. I bought a couple of books on his work and they are filled with wonderful, punchy paintings that have great compositional and colour choices. It was his style that influenced the cover to Durham Red: The Empty Suns. 

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So that was the background and inspiration in place and I already knew what I wanted to do; a big floating head of Cyd, Bag and include dotted around elements of the story (actually cut and pasted from the strip and painted over to harmonise with the cover. 

I was using a chisel-shaped painting brush in PhotoShop that I had used once before on a Dredd poster which I quite liked so went with that.

At some point I think I realised I should send a sketch to Tharg to okay the design (d’oh!) so I drew the sketch over the composited art and sent that off. 

Luckily Tharg liked it so I continued with the composition, moving stuff around, squinting at it, resizing. Funnily enough, the hardest thing was choosing the background colour. I settled on purple but I dithered with white and black for ages. 

It can be small things like this that the reader probably doesn’t even think about that can stymie you. I played with some borders but eventually went without. 

I did a final pass to punch up the contrast and colours until I was relatively satisfied with it and posted it off hoping it would be well received.  

Now that I see 2000 AD  are printing covers up, I might tap old Thargie Pie for a freebie. (Dammit- I put in the hours!) This one I wouldn’t mind having myself on the living room wall. What a funny circular thing life is! 

It’s true – Tharg’s recently given the okay to reproduce the thrill power for new and classic covers to the Prog and Judge Dredd Megazine. You can find the ever-growing selection here.

And the always generous Mighty One would like it known that he’s magnanimously gifting the prints to the artists involved – he may be a demanding master but he’s a generous one! [Is that okay Tharg? Can I have that bread and water ration you promised now?]

There you go, another incredible image to grace the front of the Galaxy’s Greatest, another fabulous Mark Harrison creation to go with another magnificent episode of The OUT.  

Thanks so very much to Mark for sending it along – you can find Prog 2323 in shops and on the 2000 AD web shop from 15 March.

We’re building up quite a little reference library of Mark’s Covers Uncovered pieces now, all of them an insightful and fascinating deep dive into the creative process – be sure to have a look at these – Prog 2187, Prog 2193, Prog 2251, Prog 2254, Prog 2261, Prog 2314, and Prog 2317. And do be sure to read the interview we did with Dan Abnett and Mark Harrison all about The Out right here.

And for those of you yet to embrace the beauty and joy of experiencing The Out, you can catch up with Books 1 and 2 in the first collected volume, available from the 2000 AD store right here. Seriously, in years to come we’ll be talking of this as one of THE classics of 2000 AD.