The return of big blue – Andy Clarke’s Rogue Trooper for Prog 2388
26th June 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!
Inside the Prog we’re up to part 3 of Rogue Trooper: Souther Belle by Geoffrey T Wessel and Dan Cornwell in a return to Nu Earth and the never-ending war between the Norts and the Southers. Created by the Southers to survive the poisonous wastes of Nu Earth, Rogue is the last of the Genetic Infantrymen. Together with the biochips of his fallen comrades in arms, Helm, Gunnar, and Bagman, they’re searching for the traitor that sold them out.
But along the way to finding the Traitor General, there’s more stories to be told and we’re right in the middle of one of those here, as Rogue is on a rescue mission to track down the mysterious and deadly voice of the Nort propaganda broadcast Souther Belle. Rogue and the bio-chips have identified the voice as one of the female G.I. ‘Dolls’ – but will Rogue get there in time? And is all really as it sounds? Well, for that you’re going to have to be reading Souther Belle
But now, let’s peruse the incredible artwork from Andy Clark for this week’s Prog cover… the return of the big blue Nort-killing machine…
According to Andy, the brief for this one was simple…
‘I think Matt’s brief for this one was something like “Rogue kneeling firing towards us”.’
And with that in mind, the Clarke droid set about working up a couple of rough cover ideas…
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Tharg – or at least his Earthly representative, Cyber-Matt – gives the nod to version 2 and Andy sets about doing his thing.
Just for a change for the art droids, this one was all pretty simple – going from pencils to figure inks to putting it all together with greytones…
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Then comes the final stages, adding colours, first flats and then final colour before doing what Andy’s previously described as poking and prodding until it all starts to come together or ‘A lot of mucking about and hoping, in other words.’
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Of course, despite it all sounding wonderfully simple, the art droids always manage to find a bit of a black cloud on an otherwise beautiful day and it seems the Clarke droid is no exception, signing off the latest missive with all this gorgeous art with this…
‘It didn’t come out as I hoped – but I like the texture in the landscape.’
There’s just something about artists that makes you want to give them a big hug and tell them it’s all good. And then you send in Mek-Quake to get them back to work, expecting them to make something this damn good…
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So thank you so much to Andy for sending along the art that all went into creating such a great cover that you’ll find on shelves galaxy-wide from 26 June, as well as the 2000 AD webshop.
As for more Covers Uncovered action from Andy, be sure to have a look at his covers for Prog 2287, Prog 2290, Prog 2312, and Megazine 444. And then there’s that gorgeous triumvirate of covers for the soon-to-be-collected and rather excellent Smash! that Andy was responsible for– issue 1, issue 2, and issue 3. Oh, and you can get hold of Smash! The Broxteth Devil on 11 September.
And finally, here’s the full size versions of those initial roughs from Andy plus a little close-up Rogue… but before those, just something that Andy drew our attention to already, the rather strangely beautiful textural work on the landscape behind Rogue – greytones, flats, colours, and final version…
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