A crouching, roaring beast fills this panel almost entirely, rendered in sickly greens and yellows that give the whole scene a toxic, unnatural cast. The creature is powerfully built with a shaggy mane framing a snarling, fanged face, arms spread wide against the narrow stone walls of what looks like a corridor or shaft, its clawed feet braced on a metal grate below. A caption box above reads And, as if in answer to a prayer, while a speech balloon beside the creature simply names it, The Avanc, confirming this is a specific, named monster summoned or arriving at a moment of desperate need within the story. The claustrophobic framing, walls pressing in on both sides, ceiling barely visible above, makes the creature feel enormous and trapped at once, filling every available inch of space it's been given. Bisley's colour work leans hard into monochrome green wash punctuated by orange highlights on the fur, a technique he used often in his 2000 AD strip work to create mood through palette rather than naturalistic lighting. The single-word caption doing the work of introducing the monster, letting the painting itself carry all the visual terror, is a good example of the collaborative shorthand between Bisley's art and the scripting he worked under during his prolific run on British genre comics following his 1987 debut at the magazine.
The Avanc
