Comics

‘Top Scoffin’ Biked To Your Coffin’ – Eoin Coveney Talks Portals & Black Goo

15th July 2023

Starting in the pages of the latest issue of 2000 AD, Portals & Black Goo is a chance to visit a London where the monsters are real and REALLY hungry.

What’s the solution? Whether it’s brains, bugs, entrails, or blood, Devouroo will deliver to you – it’s ‘Delicious prey, a click away!’

Created by John Tomlinson and Eoin Coveney, Portals & Black Goo is a new seven-part series taking a look at a world where the monsters have moved in alongside ordinary Londoners. But what are the vampires, the werewolves, and the demons meant to do for food when they can’t take a bite out of their neighbours?

That’s where Devouroo comes in, the delivery service for monsters. ‘They deliver, you devour!’ And the poor mugs charged with getting the plasma to the vampires and the viscera to the werewolves? Well that would be a load of zero-hours contract delivery riders, taking their lives in their hands every time they hop on their mopeds and head on through Devouroo’s very own temporary portals generated by eldritch resonances.

So, without further ado, over to the artist on Portals & Black Goo – Eoin Coveney…

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So, Eoin, we’re talking to John tomorrow, but what’s Portals & Black Goo all about from your point of view?

EOIN COVENEY: On the face of it, it’s about a generation Z guy trying to make his way in a modern big city, which happens to be filled with monsters and demonic spirits. It’s also seems to me to be about prejudice and societal factions, which, for whatever reason feel in conflict with each other.

How did you come to be on art for the series? John had the basic idea and developed it from there – but did he get in touch with you or was it Tharg?

EC: Tharg got in touch. I understand that John was thinking of me as a possible artist on the series, after seeing this one page I drew for a Terror Tale he’d written. [That would be Wunza in Prog 2285, June 2022]

EC: He apparently liked my work sufficiently to think I might be a good fit for this. Of course, the Mighty One makes the ultimate decision and called me to the mountain once again. I was excited to get the email!

So what sort of thing did you want to bring to Portals & Black Goo? What particular elements came out in the development stage?

EC: As always, when a new script arrives with a new world and atmosphere, I’m just open to whatever my mind conjures up while reading it. In this case, I found myself thinking of the film Attack the Block. The night-time aesthetic in that film works so well and I felt the urban setting and gritty sense of danger really suited the story. I guess something about the way that film was shot and lit made the urban reality/ fantastical atmosphere very convincing.

So, once I felt that was right, I started visualising the panels in my head, as I read, with that kind of look. On the characters: I paid close attention to the John’s descriptions, when given- of course, but their dialogue and obvious outlooks inferred by that, gave me clear ideas on their appearances and body language.

John’s already been fulsome in his praise of you in the PR I’ve seen – “I’ve always thought that the best comics artists are also actors, and Eoin has really brought the characters to life. Enhanced by Jim Boswell’s suitably creepy colours he’s done an amazing job – the characters and settings are very ‘real’, thus making the fantastical elements more convincing. I couldn’t be happier with the finished result.”

And yes, the finished product looks excellent – you and Jim have definitely got a darkness to the whole thing that works really well.

EC: Well, I was delighted to hear John was impressed with my work on this! It was only later, while reading Johns thoughts, that I realised he was also thinking of the same filmic influences and aesthetics as I was.

I also like to surprise the writer and maybe confound some expectations and I know that some of the characters appearances were not exactly what he was envisaging, which John was totally open to and enjoyed, I think!

Jim allowed the line art to still really sing while making really bold colour statements. When I saw the first frame he sent, I remember thinking: This is how I’d try to colour it- but this is better than I’d do it!

You’ve captured the urban environment perfectly, all the detritus of modern life lending a spooky quality to it all.

Having something set at night must lead an artist to making a lot of difficult decisions to get the clarity of the storytelling through yet also keeping the darkness, the moody setting, the creepy horrors to be found, especially in a tale that deals with the creatures of the night – even if they are just getting a takeaway!

EC: Yes, completely correct! I find depicting night time a tricky thing to get right in a comic- especially if it’s in colour. The story has to be crystal clear but it also has to feel dark! As I knew this would be in colour, I tried to find a balance between areas of pure black and leaving enough expanses blank, hoping the colourist wouldn’t use murky colours.

That’s why I was so happy when I saw Jim’s colouring. He very kindly reached out to me on Instagram and fed me a few details of the coloured pages he’d done by that stage. I was immediately impressed and excited with how he handled the colours.

Finally on your art for Portals & Black Goo, it’s always great to get an artist to talk process with us. Can you take us through the creation of a page here? Any particular adaptations to your art to fit the tale?

EC: I lived in enough big cities to know what kind of atmosphere I was looking for. Buildings, all crammed in together, piles of rubbish with old shopping trolleys etc. Narrow cobbled alleyways with squid- like drainpipes and aircon units filling brick walls felt like the kind of setting that Kroy and Nona would move in. That was the sensibility which led my intent.

Page 2 of episode 1 features a lot of the themes which will become familiar: Dark alleyways and run- down council estates inhabited by Monsters both familiar and seemingly everyday.

Kroy’s on his moped here too, as he covers a lot of ground in this series on the back of it. On the Portals themselves, I made it an upright oval shape with distinctive lines and energy trails as I felt I could show just parts of portals later, even if it was just a sliver of one visible.

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EC: When I read ‘middle aged werewolf with cardigan, his little boy werewolf in a superhero costume’ (I’m paraphrasing), in John’s description, I thought – how the hell am I going to show that so it doesn’t look completely silly?

Truth is, when I’m solving the Storytelling and Staging problems, the rest sort of takes care of itself. Sometimes I don’t know how I’m going to depict something until I start drawing, That was sort of the case here. Definite nods to Steve Dillon’s werewolves – they were burned indelibly into my consciousness after I read Cry of The Werewolf as a kid!

Also, we meet one of Kroy’s nemeses on his chopper, so this page had a nice mix of atmosphere, exposition and action and I think I ticked the boxes pretty successfully.

I went digital a few years ago and have found it very liberating, as I no longer have to worry about preserving paper grain, which degrades the more you work on it and erase pencil marks. I was always little precious with inking on board. I still love it, but the tension of making possible mistakes/ smudges/ spills on paper does loom over it somewhat. So, not having that to worry about means I can focus on the results rather than having these minor frets in the back of my mind.

In digital, I’m able to use some dry and textured brushes, too as that grittiness just suited the setting and the slightly pock-marked feel to most big cities.

I don’t send pencils per se any more. I now send Tharg loose but fully worked out inked roughs, which when approved, change only in terms of rendering when finished.

Are there plans right now for more Portals & Black Goo?

EC: No idea- it’s completely out of my hands! The readers are the ultimate arbiters. I know I would like to do more, having developed the look of the world and the characters. John would need to feel the desire to write more, too. It will rest with The Mighty One, as it should.

It always rests in the hands of TMO, bow down before him!

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You’ve been an illustrator now for the best part of 30 years, pretty much getting into it about the same time as John. For 2000 AD, you created The Alienist with Gordon Rennie and Emma Beeby.

Am I right in thinking that you mostly work in commercial illustration but that comics is something of an itch you have to scratch every so often?

EC: That’s about right, Richard. I’d say about 60- 70% of my year’s work is commercial illustration. Quite often, its overtly graphic novel art and sometimes it’s strip work but for non-traditional clients. I’ve drawn comics for Legal Firms and last year, The RAF!

But 2000 AD and European comics have informed my style from my start as a pro, so I do scratch that creative itch fairly regularly. That said, there is nothing like doing a series for 2000 AD. The level of commitment and the creative rewards to be reaped are top-drawer.

Sometimes it feels like certain pages are never going to end, while I’m doing them! But of course, when it’s completed and I get to read and hold it in my hands- the hard work pays back big time. The feeling is very special.

So what is it about 2000 AD that keeps dragging you back?

EC: For me, it’s a few things. Firstly, it’s not hyperbole to call 2000 AD the repository of the best British comic art of the last 45 years or so. The standard of talent to have bloomed there is second to none. To be a very tiny part of that tradition and is a big honour!

It’s also the crazy energy and attitude- black humour doesn’t get much blacker. And I’ve always loved that. When I was a kid, the violence was pretty mind blowing, too. I’ll never forget the cover of Prog 3 with the guy being eaten by a T- Rex!

One thing that’s mentioned in the ‘about’ section of your website is that you worked with Will Eisner on the graphic novel Ireland: A Graphic History, written by Michael Scott and Morgan Llewellyn. Now that’s not something many artists can put on their resume! How was it working with a great such as Eisner?

EC: It was like being intravenously fed pure knowledge! Well, ok that’s a bit over the top, but I was 26 and very in awe of his abilities and energy. I learned so much that I had never thought about before.

My predominant memory of Will is his smile. He was always smiling and even in his (at the time) early 80’s, was mentally sharp as a tack. I don’t think I’ve met many people more giving than he was.

One clear memory stands out. One time, during a critique of some pages, he put his hands on my shoulders and said ‘You know, you just really need to loosen up!’ I remember being so bewildered and upset that I couldn’t click with what he was saying. I know now. That’s what matters! He made the medium much more understandable to me.

Another thing I kept coming across whilst researching you and your work for this was the graphic novel American Caesar. It looked mighty impressive. But hunting around the Internet, I can’t find much mention of it beyond a number of years back. What happened to that one?

EC: Gosh, that’s probably about 10 years ago I last worked on that. I and the writer had a royalty-only deal with a US publisher and I (rather naively) thought I would be able to do it over a couple of years. I pencilled about 22 pages over the course of a year, when it dawned on me that I’d be years doing it, with no guarantee of any significant earnings. I may be many things, but I am not that idealistic. So, it petered out and I refocused my energies elsewhere.

I did learn a hell of a lot while doing it, though. Most of the story was guys in suits talking, so I found new ways to frame situations from a psychological point of view. Simple things like showing the bad guys casting big shadows, showing key props in extreme foreground with figures dwarfed by them. Villains with lightning flashing behind them through windows. I found ways of making a conversation more interesting by enhancing the power struggle going in between 2 characters with framing and juxtaposition.

When did you first get into comics and 2000 AD as a reader?

EC: Comics weren’t all that interesting to me as a kid. Most of my friends read a Warlord or Tiger, but they didn’t interest me greatly as the themes of war and sport were not for me. Dinosaurs was what I was obsessed with. Flesh, debuting in this new comic I’d heard of in school – and there was quite a buzz I remember! – got me to buy issue 2. I was hooked from that point on. The violence and danger of Flesh was deeply impressive to me. I also found it very compelling that sci-fi and dinosaurs could exist together in a credible story. That concept of Trans Time harvesting dinosaurs for meat… that was really new to me.

Also, Belardinelli’s colour double centre pages for Dan Dare were like some amazing drug I’d never conceived possible before. It was only around then that I became aware that people drew these… and I wanted to do that.

And what about making comics – did that start at an early age as well?

EC: I drew my first comic at the age of 10. It was as faithful an adaptation of The Incredible Hulk TV pilot as I could manage. I still have some of it, ragged and fragile but still intact. It’s funny, but even then, I had a burning desire to make comics. I think in a way, I was more ambitious as a kid than I am now! I guess I saw all of the opportunities and none of the potential obstacles. But as a kid, you don’t see that and so the prospect of drawing comics for a living seemed like heaven.

I kept on drawing comics and wrote the ‘plots’… if you could call them that. Most of them were rip- offs of stories I’d read in 2000 AD.

Eoin, another interview I read with you had you saying this about getting into 2000 AD… ‘I owe Steve McManus of 2000 AD for giving me a meeting many years ago even though it was against their policy.’ Tell us more!

EC: Wow- the innocence! I was 22, just out of Art School. I was in London and basically I bought the latest Prog, looked at the fine print at the bottom of the Nerve Centre and found the business address. Got the tube to Mornington Crescent, where they were based at the time and walked straight into the offices with my giant A2 portfolio and asked if I could see someone! I reckon the receptionist must have been bemused… or sympathetic.

Either way, she called someone and got waved in. Steve McManus met me inside and led me to his office, where I presented him with my work. Somehow, he saw some potential there and gave me a 6- page one off script to try out. It’s so long ago, now that I can’t remember if it was just a try-out, or it ended up being commissioned for the then- fledgling Megazine.

It was never published, as the whole Maxwell thing was going down at the time and 2000 AD was sold. In the whirlwind of activity, my artwork was lost – thus sparing me the embarrassment of seeing it now! But it was my first paid comics gig.

Of course, I thought that regular work and fame would soon follow. Reality soon bit hard and I realised this wasn’t going to be as easy as all that.

You’ve already mentioned some of your influences, Steve Dillon’s Cry of the Werewolf, Belardinelli’s Dan Dare, and your young self was entranced by Joan Solà-Segalés’ art on Flesh in the earliest days of 2000 AD. But what other influences have there been on your artwork?

EC: My first big comics artistic influence was, like so many others, Brian Bolland. This is going back to The Day The Law Died Era, when I would have been around 8 or 9. I lapsed reading it regularly at around prog 120 and didn’t come back until Cry of the Werewolf, so I was bit older.

Everything changed then, when I saw Cam Kennedy‘s work on Rogue Trooper. I was struck by how gritty the world, the hardware and the atmosphere felt. Cam’s work kind of opened my eyes to more visceral and expressive work. To this day, he is till my number 1 of all the Golden Age 2000 AD artists. I started to notice the work of Jose Ortiz, and also Steve Dillon. As I matured, I realised I prefer to see the bumps and scratches in comic art.

European comic art is a much bigger influence on my work than American. I mean – I’m in awe of what golden age Marvel and DC artists did! Even now, the best of U.S. comics impress me profoundly. But I just have a natural visceral reaction to work that is more roughly drawn, like Kennedy, Redondo, Ortiz or Toppi. I say roughly, but they are all master craftsmen. There was just some kinda scratchiness to the work that they all shared.

Another favourite interviewers question now – if you could do anything, any story, any character, what strip/story idea would you love to get into the pages of the Prog?

EC: Wow, I’m not sure I’d know where to start. It would definitely be something horror-related and with OTT violence. Maybe Mean Machine loses his memory and crash lands on a planet of pacifists. Either something fun like that or straight up horror.

Now, to end these we always like to end with a chance for you to tell us what you’re working on and what we can expect to see from you in the near (and maybe not so near) future?

EC: Right now, I’m working on a poster for a short film and have a book cover on the go for a Dublin Publisher. I’ve also agreed in principle to do a crowdfunded comic, but I can’t say anything more about that just now. I have many ideas percolating in my head- some pitches and covers. It never ends!

And what’s lined up from your good self for the rest of 2023 and into 2024? More for 2000 AD?

EC: I would love to do more work for 2000 AD, of course. The creative freedom I enjoy while working for Tharg is unmatched. It’s very hands-off and that sense of freedom does feed into the work, no doubt.

I had my first ever Prog Cover a few months ago, too. I’d definitely like to pitch more of those. A cover feels like a real event and I was fortunate to have the Blythe Droid on colours! I also have a script from a major writer that I want to give a really hard hard swing at.

EC: I often don’t know what’s coming down the river, really. I took up digital painting last year, which I’m having so much fun with. That has already gotten me a few painted commissions, so I see plenty of potential growth there.

Really, I just want to keep on learning and improving. It never ends!

Well, the learning might never end – just as it shouldn’t – but this is where our chat had to come to an end!

A huge thank you to Eoin for taking the time away from the drawing board (don’t worry, Tharg made a note of the time he owes) to answer our questions and send over some fabulous artwork for you.

You can find the first episode of Portals & Black Goo: Night Shift in the pages of 2000 AD Prog 2340, available right now from comic shops, newsagents, and the 2000 AD web shop. It’s going to be easy to spot, just keep an eye out for SK Moore’s magnificent Portals & Black Goo wrapround cover…

And now, those Eoin Coveney roughs, inks, and finished pages (colours by Jim Boswell) in their rightful full size…