Comics

2000 AD Covers Uncovered: Spiralling down into Brink – double the covers from INJ Culbard

22nd May 2024

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, not one but two Brink covers from Brink series artist INJ Culbard – for the new Prog 2383 and his last cover for Prog 2379. Both perfectly, absolutely, brilliantly Brink…

Throughout Brink’s previous five books, Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard have delivered something perfect – a sci-fi thriller and a crime noir procedural in a universe where the last of humanity has been forced to evacuate to overpopulated space station habitats, the Habs. Against an ever-more nightmarish world of sect-crime and madness, we’ve been with Habitat Security Officer Bridget Kurtis from the start, watching with her as things get strange and as Mercury went dark.

Now we’re into Brink Book Six: Consumed, with Kurtis part of a team finally tasked with delving deeper into what happened with Mercury and where the sects come into it all. But before all that, we have Kurtis on a 10-day stopover on Belleholme Hab. Bonner’s off enjoying the golf.

Kurtis? Well, she’s always one to find trouble no matter where she is, and it’s usually sect-related…

We’ve had a few weeks of Brink: Consumed by now and two excellent Culbard covers. But Tharg has been even stricter later with the art droids and reckons they should be grateful for the regularly scheduled breaks they get – after all, what could an art droid do with more than 30 minutes every couple of weeks?

All that means that this week you get a two-for-one – two incredible Prog covers, one zarjaz artist. So, without further ado, over to Ian, starting with Prog 2379…

INJ CULBARD: I’m going to talk about the first two covers I’ve done for the Prog in relation to Brink: Consumed (Book Six).

The brief for the first was simple. Habitat in space, the mouth we see in Book Five and on the first page of this series to be seen as if consuming (as per the title for this run) the Habitat itself.

So I responded quickly to the brief with the following image (and a brief explanation in case it wasn’t clear what I’d drawn). I have a general layout I’ve been following since… I can’t think when. Certainly, Book Five, where there’s a circular centre to the composition.

Oh no Ian, it’s way, way further back than that – right the way back to Prog 1989 we reckon.

INJ CULBARD: Part of the reason I do this is because I know that any one of these covers is likely to serve as the cover to the next collected volume and if you look at the Brink logo on those books, it has this curving crescent that cuts through it, so I’m covering all my bases. I’m ensuring it can work for either cover, for the Prog or the collection.

I got the thumbs up to go ahead.

The initial pass was too cartoony. I think I deleted it. Gone forever. Good riddance. Instead of the heavenly maelstrom, I ended up working the fur into a dissolve into black starry background for the final thing, so here’s all that fur work…

And then to color, working with the established palette. So, in all, a really simple process.

The next one, not so much. That was way harder for some reason.

Next brief: The sigils and some drops of blood from the slaughterhouse.

So I knew we would see the faces of Bridge and Wade reflected in these drops of blood, and so I quickly sent over the following image.

I got approval and then proceeded. And what I ended up with I simply didn’t like.

I happen to still have it on my desktop so I’ll show you that now so you can see what a difference self-doubt and second-guessing makes.

It just didn’t work for me. Too messy? Too close?

So I went back to the drawing board, and took a step back both in terms of assessment but also visually, scaling the characters down so they were further away and showing more of the building behind them, warping in the volume of this blob of blood, not colouring the line… just keeping with the drawing.

Throwing in some pedestrians, giving the eye more work to do.

So you’ve got this guy (second on the left) wearing a Roscoe’s hat… if you remember Book Five, we briefly see that Roscoe’s is a no-tell hotel and everything is very pink and magenta in that hotel, so that guy’s wearing pink tinted shades, so I guess everywhere is like being in Roscoe’s for him. I don’t know about you but when I see extras/bit parts in stories I start giving them little biographies.

And then colours, again using established palettes, but I liked the way reflective surfaces are portal-like. So she’s observing and everything is back to front, kind of where she’s at in the investigation, you sort of think you know what you’re looking at but something isn’t quite right.

Wow – two covers to double your Thrill Power! So many thanks to Ian for sending them our way. They’re both absolutely stunning, perfect covers to show off one of the greatest modern tales of the Prog!

You can find 2000 AD Prog 2383 wherever you pick up your weekly dose of Ghafflebette comics, including the 2000 AD web shop from 17 August. And if you happened to miss Prog 2279 – how about checking out a subscription to guarantee you’ll never miss any more of the Galaxy’s Greatest?

Of course, you REALLY, REALLY need to have all five volumes of Brink in your life and on your shelves – a stunning series that rewards repeated reading so well – buy them here – Brink Book One, Brink Book Two, Brink Book Three, Brink Book Four, Brink Book Five.