While at art school, Bolland drew and self-published a couple of fanzines and his work was published in British underground magazines Frendz, International Times and OZ. Bolland thought McMahon was "terrific, the real ideas man on Dredd," but noted that McMahon's approach was "very impressionistic," while the "average comics reader, certainly at the time, does tend to prefer realism. He would later cite Kane and Alex Toth as "pinnacle[s] of excellence," [1] alongside Curt Swan, Murphy Anderson, Sid Greene, Joe Kubert, Ross Andru, Mike Esposito, Nick Cardy, and Bruno Premiani, whose influences showed in his "early crude stabs at drawing comics. In addition to his early forays into full interior strip art, and his later focus on covers, Bolland has also produced a number of short – often single pages – strips, numerous pin-ups and a pair of ongoing irregular humour strips. The covers for the third volume of The Invisibles were done using a computer, in part because Vertigo had requested "painted" covers and Bolland felt that line and flat color wouldn't suffice.

Consequently, very few of his early strips could be traced, with thieves seeming to take a particular shine to his centrespreads and covers - most of which have seemingly disappeared. He adds that for artists like him that are well known for covers, editors will usually ask for pin-ups instead. Brian: I wrote lengthy notes to John about my preference for November colours and the flash-back scenes in monochrome.A few connections just completely dried up, and after months of follow-up e-mails I had to admit defeat, aware of the awful possibility that the owner might be ill, bereaved, or dead.

Bolland hadn't read any comics before the age of ten, but by 1960 he was intrigued by Dell Comics' Dinosaurus! 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. Through Landau, Bolland saw his strip published across Europe in publications including Linus, Cimoc and (in Sweden) Pox.I wrote it, in part, to allow myself the opportunity to draw details from the Batman comics I loved as a kid. 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. Each book is hand-numbered with a mounted signature page SIGNED by Brian Bolland and Judge Dredd co-creator John Wagner.

a]t the time, despite her long history at DC, her iconic appearance, even her cult TV series, she wasn't a character that A-list artists were lining up to draw. The young Bolland did not rate Marvel Comics as highly as DC, feeling the covers cluttered and the paper quality crude. Best known in the United Kingdom as one of the Judge Dredd artists for British comics anthology 2000 AD, he spearheaded the ' British Invasion' of the American comics industry, and in 1982 produced the artwork alongside author Mike W.So many of these images were truly iconic that I didn’t think anybody would object to their inclusions.

Occasionally an editor will ask for something specific, as in the case of the first Invisibles cover, I drew for Shelly Bond. In 1986, Bolland was one of several artists who contributed pages to the anniversary issue Batman No. But Brian continued to improve with each new strip and illustration, and happily the book includes much of his best work from the ‘80s, which represents Brian at the peak of his powers.

Although his forays into interior artwork are almost universally acclaimed, Bolland is now far more commonly seen as 'just' a cover artist – although he notes that he has never decided to actually solely create covers, having merely explored other jobs from strip work. 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. y]ou really have to be constantly thinking of ways that the image on the cover will intrigue and lure in the potential punter. As early as 1962, aged 11, Bolland remembers thinking that " Carmine Infantino's work on the Flash and Gil Kane's on Green Lantern and the Atom had a sophistication about it that I hadn't [previously] seen. 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.