Over on his blog, Chris Ryall of IDW has posted up the upcoming Dredd cover for IDW’s 8th issue, drawn by Howard Chaykin with colour by Jesus Aburto.
You can check it out both in colour and black and white HERE
One thing though… the lawmaster is very familiar. In fact it’s identical to a pic from 2000AD’s own Lee Carter. Now I’m not gonna pretend to know about the artistic etiquette of this as they’ve officially licenced Dredd and his world so can probably use what they like. Also as they’re getting name artists for the covers you’d expect them to not be Dredd experts and go online for reference pictures knowing what sad nit-picky bastards we are about things not being exact.
That said, this seems to be more than just using the pic as reference.
Howard Chaykin is a fucking comic legend and rightly so. The man is a genius and has done some incredible work. Just think it’d be nice if our own Mr Carter got some kind of official nod for seemingly contributing half of the cover image anonymously.
Or maybe he will and I’m just jumping the gun. In which case I’ll shut the fuck up.
That Chaykin cover is terrible, there’s something about a lot of the IDW covers, Dredd just doesn’t look right, he’s too muscular and end up looking too bulked out in the uniform. Shows how difficult it is to draw Dredd properly.
They should have used Lee’s, it’s way better than the blatent RIP. Give lee some cash, he clearly did the work.
Agreed. Outrageous.
The two versions look slightly different—mainly in that Chaykin’s is tilted slightly away from us while Carter’s is tilted slightly towards us. Is there more than one design for the motorcycle? Chaykin may very well have used the Carter image for reference, but if he had to redraw it from a different angle in perspective, it wouldn’t be a swipe.
The slight differences are down to my lack of photoshop skills to be honest.
There was another version of this where someone who knew their stuff had rotated and resized the pic and it was 100%
Again, that might be cool, I dont know the rules for licenced stuff. But I think you’d struggle to argue the bike wasnt a cut and paste
Key point. No two artists draw the Lawmaster the same. There are always different eagles, exhausts or lights. As far as I can tell these are damn near identical.