Classic cover artists: Steve Dillon

While not first and foremost a covers artist – I believe his greatest (of many) strength was as a panel-by-panel storyteller, excelling in character and the nuances of human expression – the late Steve Dillon produced some fantastic, memorable covers for 2000AD. I know that the Judge Dredd ‘Cry of the Werewolf’ cover is a seminal one for many, and surely one of the purest examples of a cover doing precisely what it is supposed to do: irresistibly pull people to the comic.

Steve was a favourite artist of mine long before I paid any attention to the creator credits. He was there when I started reading non-humour comics in 1979 (Doctor Who Weekly), in my years of lapping up every prog of 2000AD in the early 1980s, when I returned to the comic briefly in my late teens (I read a load of issues on a summer trip to Ireland in 1987, loving his Judge Dredd ‘Alabammy Blimps’ and the Zenith cover shown below), and when I rediscovered comics as an adult through the astonishing Preacher series on which he provided phenomenal artwork. He was a unique talent who clearly knew and understood people, and it’s a pleasure to include him in this series of cover artists.