Comics

2000 AD Covers Uncovered To The MAX! It’s Mega-City Max Time with Priscilla Bampoh

19th July 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 it’s time to dive into the latest new 2000 AD Special – and what a special Special it is… it’s fresh, it’s new, it’s a vision of a future that you’ve not seen before, it’s Mega-City Max! And we’re taking a look behind the scenes with cover artist Priscilla Bampoh.

Mega-City Max is brand-new, fresh as you can get comics, max-ed out 2000 AD thrills for a new generation. It features cutting-edge comic talent and their versions of classic 2000 AD characters, including DeMarco, Devlin Waugh, Harlem Heroes, and Walter the Wobot, Dredd’s one-time house robot. With all-new stories for an all-new teen readership, Mega-City Max features some of the hottest breaking talent in comics, including Lucie Ebrey, VV Glass, Hannah Templer, Ramzee, Oliver Gerlach, Korinna Mei Veropoulou, and Roger Langridge.

And of course, right there on the cover to Mega-City Max we have Priscilla Bampoh, who’s about to tell us all about putting this one together…

PRISCILLA BAMPOH: I think the biggest challenge making this piece was the background, designing the city itself.

SK Moose’s spread art for 2000 AD Prog 2179 was one of the inspirations for the building designs and figuring out how to design a wraparound comic book cover as it was new territory for me.

Pris is talking about this one from Stewart… and you can find the Covers Uncovered piece for that here.

PB: A lot of the focus was designing an interesting setting, making sure there was little to no similar designs and that something was going on.

With the background sorted, I got to move on to my favourite part! The characters given were meant to be styled like they were going out together, roaming about in the big city.

The brief requested Gem, Devlin, and De Marco to be the main characters they wanted to fit onto the front cover, and that was a huge plus; they look like the type of characters I would want to work with for other projects. I managed to fit Walter in the front cover to avoid any empty space.

The moment I got the references for the characters, I had an immediate idea of what type of look I’d imagined they wear. Gem, for example, I imagined a retro bomber jacket, while someone like Devlin, who at first glance look insufferably pompous, would probably keep the more ‘smart’ look.

Now, the three stages of putting the cover together – from Pris’ initial rough through to the finished art ready to throw the colours onto…

PB: The goal was to make a “fun, vibrant” setting, and you see that most with the colours.

Here’s the initial colour palette; I like working with a lot of reds and would use that as the sunset.

The final piece matches the colours used for the cover, plus I had to remove the badge from De Marco’s coat.

I think an improvement I would make would be to make the characters feel less static; make them look like they were actually roaming around the city that surrounds them as opposed to just standing.

Thank you so much to Priscilla Bampoh for sending that one along – especially as she was snowed under with University stuff! Yes, all that absolute brilliant art and she’s still incredibly young! What an incredible talent!

You can find her stunning artwork on the cover of Mega-City Max – out on 19 July from comic shops and 2000 AD’s web shop..

Pris is a brilliant young artist and comic artist with an incredible future. You can see more of her work at her website, you should follow on Twitter, and all the other relevant links are at her Linktr.ee.

Right, time for bigger versions of the art you’ve seen, just because we can and it’s so great to see… the front and the back versions of rough, ‘pencils’, ‘inks’, and both colours. And after that, more of Pris’ great artwork to make you drool!

And now, just to give you some idea of what her work is all about, as if the fabulous Mega-City Max cover didn’t give you enough, here’s just a sampling of just how good Priscilla Bampoh is…

First of all, the only time we’ve chatted to Pris, albeit only briefly, was with the interview series for the 45 Years of 2000 AD Art Book, where she gave us this wonderful interpretation of Venus Bluegenes, saying this…

‘The character I got to draw was Venus Blugenes. In the art, I had the character all bloodied looking tired and in pain. I was basically just thinking what’s the best way to make her look as intimidating as possible.

I had her coming out of what looks like a huge wreckage in a jungle, kind of a way to show her strength and resilience. I look at images of Venus, and I’m like-WOW she’s fierce and deadly, she’s sort of the type of woman I try to replicate with my original characters nowadays.

The last 2000 AD character I made an illustration of was Durham Red, who was a joy to draw, but I feel like I play to my strengths as an artist more with Venus, especially with the colours. I’m not going to lie, I was unfamiliar with the character since I’m still very new to the 2000AD series, so I don’t have a huge attachment, but I wouldn’t hesitate to draw Venus again given the chance.