Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

Yesterday I received my subscriber's copy of Judge Dredd Megazine #282 and was just blown away by the cover.

I am a huge fan of Colin MacNeil's art and actually own a few pages of his (some painted 2000AD strip and a few black and white ink washes from the sadly missed Warhammer Monthly). I've also met the guy and he's a top bloke. If I ever get into writing comics again, I would feel honoured to work on a story with him.

Anyway, the cover promotes the Dan Abnett-scripted Insurrection, which is now the first thing I read on opening the mag. It's basically Dan does Space Marines, only in Dredd's universe, and Colin's style is identical to that he finished up with on the Warhammer Comic. But that's probably, in part, why I love it so.

And general consensus of opinion appears to be that this is a classic in the making. Another reason would have to be the CATT* units that appeared this week - a wonderful piece of inspired design by Colin.

So for the time being I'm getting a regular fix of Battlefleet Gothic-inspired war-fleets, Mega-City Judges in power armour and a good old-fashioned Warhammer 40K future war story, beautifully rendered by one of my favourite artists in my monthly dose of Megazine-styled Thrill-power.

If you've not seen it for yourself, check it out here, or alternatively wait for the bound-to-be trade paperback, to be published in a year or so.

*Combat All-Terrain Transport.

P J Holden - update

Many moons ago (on 21 December 2007, in fact) I posted this about the comic artist P J Holden.

P J Holden is an artist who is steadily making more and more of a name for himself within the world of comics. Having started out illustrating scripts for 2000AD (producing a fair few pages for Judge Dredd as well as Future Shocks and the ‘86ers’) he is now working on the ‘Fearless’ mini-series for Image Comics... I came to work with P J when I was scripting strips for Warhammer Monthly. I had written a three-page, one-trick story set in Games Workshop’s Necromunda setting (a futuristic industrial wasteland off-shoot of the Warhammer 40,000 universe) called ‘Slavebreak’.

Now, at the time I mentioned that I had been impressed by the amount of effort P J put into creating the various characters for the strip. Well, I'm pleased to say that the Belfast-based comic book creator has been in touch and sent me a link to his own blog - which included a post about 'Slavebreak'!

So, thanks to him I can now post the images he sent me (years ago now!) of the Pit Slave gang who featured in the story.

Enjoy.

Scuzman Veck

Lazlo

Piledriver

Krunch