A painted cover portrait of Judge Dredd standing on a pile of crushed rubble, his signature gold eagle shoulder pad and red badge gleaming against a hazy pink-and-blue sky, a massive gun braced across his forearm, a discarded helmet visible among the debris at his feet. The piece is signed Biz '97, and the confident, monumental staging, a lone armored figure standing triumphant over wreckage, follows the same trophy-pose logic Bisley used repeatedly across his Lobo covers for DC around the same period, adapted here for 2000 AD's own signature lawman. Bisley's history with Judge Dredd goes back to his earliest years at 2000 AD; after breaking in during 1987 on the relaunched ABC Warriors and then moving to Sláine, he also took on Dredd art duties, and later produced high-profile Dredd crossover work for DC as well, including Batman/Judge Dredd: Judgement on Gotham, for which he won the 1992 Eisner Award for Best Artist. This 1997 cover shows him returning to the character in his more familiar painted, muscular style, treating Dredd's bulky armor and oversized weaponry with the same weight and physical presence he gave to Sláine or Lobo, rather than the leaner, more graphic line style some other Dredd artists favored. The pink-tinged, almost apocalyptic sky in the background adds a note of grim spectacle typical of Bisley's cover work throughout the 1990s, treating even a fairly straightforward hero portrait as an occasion for atmosphere and drama rather than a plain, neutral character study.
Simon Bisley paints Judge Dredd
