Judge Dredd: The Complete Brian Bolland

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Judge Dredd by Brian Bolland: Masterpiece Edition - Acclaimed as one of the greatest artists of his generation for his work on such titles as Camelot 3000 and Batman: The Killing Joke, Brian Bolland's work on Judge Dredd helped catapult both the series and Bolland himself to international acclaim. As 2000 AD's most popular artist, Brian’s art was particularly prized and most persistently stolen, and, to this day, certain strips, including his first Judge Death serial, have never surfaced again. After finishing his college course, Bolland was hit with "the stark reality of unemployment" [13] and on the advice of Gibbons [14] joined art agency Bardon Press Features.

Even so, he "was always struggling to get the last eight or ten pages finished," and was occasionally helped by friends, both from his "Norwich School of Art days," Gibbons and future- 2000 AD and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen artist Kevin O'Neill. and that I was going to have to do the same" – was a shock, but proved to be "the very best kind of training ground.

Disenchanted by the loss of (more of) his artwork, and with declining European interest, Bolland ceased drawing the strip. Created for comedic relief, Bolland notes that "[t]he great thing about the Judge Dredd strip was it's [sic] ability to slide seamlessly between gritty sci fi adventure, nasty gothic horror, spoofery, all the way to daft comedy.

He was the penciller of Camelot 3000, Batman: Black and White (which he also wrote) and numerous other titles. Brian: I was told by the editor that my artwork hadn't turned up on time and they got someone in the Marvel "bullpen" to take my initial pencil prelim and knock off some artwork from it that day. Brian: I've had a chequered career, or more accurately a brief series of misadventures, with Marvel. Learning to draw comics, however, was an art he self-taught, with Bolland eventually writing a 15,000-word dissertation in 1973 on Neal Adams – an "artist [his teachers] had never heard of.Despite such a variety of inspirations, Bolland credits his eventual pursuance of art as a hobby and then vocation to a primary school art teacher. Bolland is also an accomplished photographer, with examples of his work being included in the Image/Desperado book The Art of Brian Bolland. For a complete list of all current and announced editions, with review links, please visit our Index.

In 1977, Bolland was approached by Syd Jordan to ghost some episodes of Jordan's newspaper strip Jeff Hawke, [37] after fellow fandom-pro artist Paul Neary had already done a fair number of them. Brian: I wrote lengthy notes to John about my preference for November colours and the flash-back scenes in monochrome. Particularly, for the first Eagle Judge Dredd comic issue – which repackaged 2000 AD stories for the American market – on which the positioning of the figures echoed similar covers Bolland had drawn "two or three times for different companies with different characters. At a time when (latest news) characters are gender neutral or polyamorous I always saw the Joker as not entirely heterosexual. The second book, "the Cursed Earth", had a cover by me too and we discovered one or two stories were starting on the wrong page so I supplied three new pages.Some photographs taken by Bolland in Burma are reprinted in the Image-published retrospective The Art of Brian Bolland. Likening the process to creating "a mini comic strip," Bolland says that "if any detail made any sense it had to be changed to something that didn't. The Judge Dredd art of Brian Bolland is regarded as some of the greatest comic art of the Eighties, and helped catapult both the series and Brian Bolland himself to international acclaim, leading him to work on such titles as Camelot 3000 and Batman: The Killing Joke.

It became almost habitual, and it did mean that there would at least be something new of mine out there to look at. The Giant first appeared in TV commercials in 1954 and his signature tagline “Ho, Ho, Ho” was added in 1961.

However, editors are still seeking a number of pages to scan and include in this special collection, many of which have not been scanned since their original publication. Among Bolland's other works is the Robert Crumb-esque semi-autobiographical stream of consciousness humour strip Mr. You'll be surprised to hear that even though Judge Dredd had been in 2000AD since Prog 2 the editors weren't sure which of the interior characters would sell the comic best if that character was on the cover. Bolland has also produced posters for local theatre groups' amateur stage productions, most notably for his local "village panto" production of Beauty and the Beast in 2004.