Last Prog: 991
Total appearances: 73
-including
those fun ‘Things to look forward to’ back cover japes, and almost as many
cover appearances as interior strip pages.
Creator credits:
Urban Strike!*
 |
| Disappointingly, not about inner city black people refusing to work until everyone stops being racist. |
Other art credits:
Judge Dredd
Anderson, Psi Division
Tales from the
Doghouse
Various one-offs
Notable character creations:
The Chieftain
Vatican
Judge-Confessor Cesare
…the poor bastard.
Notable characteristics:
Stylish, bizarre and
occasionally notorious covers.
 |
| (That impenetrable tagline is a reference to the Dredd story in the Prog, about an intelligent dog) |
Having the misfortune
to work on two of the very worst Judge Dredd stories.
Being a classically
trained fine artist who nevertheless clearly understood and enjoyed the fun
side of comics art.
And, looking at his
strip artwork, he’s noteworthy for some hyper exaggeration in his faces and figure
work, often enhanced by elegant but also simplistic-looking brush strokes to
sketch out his outlines of both people and objects. He does this very simple
thing with lines to make characters leap out of the page. It’s basic comics
stuff, really, but done super well.
 |
| OK, so he's drawing a mutant with an elephant head, but by golly does he run with the concept and make it burst out of the page! Words by Stewart Edwards |
I can’t articulate it, but his colours are
very distinctive, too. Kind of pastel and restrained, very much the opposite
end of the painting spectrum from your Bisleys.
On Mick:
Although he did get
his start on interior strip work, Austin made a pretty big mark early on with
his covers. Some of them stunning, others of them so weird that I was put off
at the time, but find that these same covers have lingered in my mind in a way
that makes me wonder if they aren’t in fact works of bizarre genius.
 |
| Straight up stunning! |
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| Just plain... weird. Although as the years go by, I admire it more than I ever thought I would. |
And yes, it’s worth
noting a mild controversy that arose over his decision to base at least one
cover on a pin-up page from a porn magazine.**
This image is based on a photo of actress Toni Shiletto. Find out more here, on another fine 2000AD blog, the Hall of Homage. As the purveyor of
sexy lady artwork in the late 80s, Austin inevitably had a go at Anderson, Psi
Division. But in fact his work on the strips wasn’t at all sexy, instead more
about atmosphere.
 |
| Sexy lady in a sexy pose, sure, but something about the face, the lighting and certainly the context somehow make it feel more sinister than sexual. Words by Alan Grant |
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| No sex here, just ethereal Judge Death fun Words by Alan Grant |
It’s Austin who drew
the story Judge Corey: Leviathan’s farewell, an incredibly
poignant tale about endangered animals and human suicide, and one that marked a
pretty big change for Anderson, Psi
Division, which turned from an action-adventure-ghost romp into a very
mature strip about introspection and character (with the odd bout of action and
comedy, of course). I hate to say it, but while Austin did beautiful work with
the city and the sea, his depiction of Empath Judge Corey did not work for me.
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| Perfect atmosphere, really clever posing of the characters, too. |
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| Probably says more about me than Austin, but I just don't read this face as a super-thoughtful, emotionally overloaded Judge. Words by Alan Grant |
As with many artists,
Austin’s early work was scattered across a mix of one-offs – a Dredd tale here, a Future Shock there, and a couple of Tales from the Doghouse episodes, from back when Tharg knew that Strontium Dog was kind of played out as
a strip, but the world was too rich to just leave alone. The scripts on that
series didn’t create too many memorable tales, but Mick Austin sure did draw
some mean-lookin' mutants.
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| A perfectly rendered haunted house and gaggle of mutants. Carlos himself would be proud of the storytelling chops. Words by Stewart Edwards |
These one-offs were all a showcase
for Austin’s atmospheric black and white line work. It’s artfully scratchy, and
desperately moody. And very much speaks to his skill as a comics artist, well worth remembering in light of his later work as a full-on fine art painter. Not many who can do both!
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| Words by John Smith |
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| Why yes, that IS a Freddy Krueger riff. Words by John Wagner |
He did get to do one
fully painted piece at this time – a Dredd story from the 1988 annual. It has
the same atmosphere as the black and white work, but it really sings in colour.
Austin also had the luxury, if that’s the word, of presenting his painted style
at a time before Bisley’s Horned God existed as a point of comparison. It’s a
cartoonier way of painting, and to an extent it’s a shame more people didn’t
try the Austin method.
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| If you know what you're doing, you can make simple colours and lines do a ton of work. There's something very Austin-y about the twisting body in that final panel, too. Words by John Wagner |
For whatever reason,
after these early strips Austin remained a firm fixture only on the front covers - and the occasional
back covers. He produced a nifty run of comedy skits called ‘Things
to look forward to’ – and I always did look forward to them appearing. There’s
as much story in there as a typical future shock, but it always gets to the
point nicely.
 |
| Goodness, that naughty schoolboy giving us the finger looks an awful lot like future PM Tony Blair. (In fact, the rest of them may be other Labour MPs from 1990ish, with a worried Neil Kinnock as the bus driver. Another challenge for the 2000AD Hall of Homage, I guess!) |
In the fullness of
time, Austin was ‘promoted’ to a series regular artist on Judge Dredd, this
time drawing some longer stories. Unfortunately for him, it was just at the
wrong time, leaving him to carry the can of the comedy/pathos mix from Garth
Ennis, on the Chieftain…
 |
| Some really quite beautiful art, along with some deliberately cartoony art, ideally suited for a story that was trying to be silly, fun and poignant but was mostly just silly. Words by Garth Ennis. |
...and endure the gruff
and grim comedy stylings of Millar n’ Morrison on Crusade…
 | |
| Does the concept of an ultra-lethal Vatican City Judge make any sense to anyone?*** That said, it's a lovely bit of imposing posing. |
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| Dumb fun, with some truly excellent colouring. Words by Mark Millar and Grant Morrison |
Austin put a lot of
effort into this work, and in fact he puts across the themes and tones of both
stories rather well – it’s just a shame that I didn’t care for them.
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| Confident painting, and for some reason I'm drawn to the background washes especially. Words by Mark Millar |
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| There's another Austin trademark - it's almost as if he's cut out the Dredd figure to stick on top of the lush background. Words by Garth Ennis |
Even paired with John
Wagner Austin didn’t have the best of times, parachuted in to help out a sick
Carlos Ezquerra on an episode of Wilderlands,
although he did get to deliver that epic’s epilogue, a much better fit for his
abilities to focus on procedure and atmosphere.
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| A rare example of Dredd doing some actual detective-style investigating! Words by John Wagner |
Austin’s final legacy
for the Prog was a single Vector 13
episode, with an especially grumpy Man in Black…
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| Words by Dan Abnett |
..and of course his
one and only series as artist, the curiosity that was Urban Strike!. Technically this was little more than an advert for
a computer game (not my area of expertise, I’m afraid), but along with writers
Steve White and Brain Williamson, Austin was more interested in delivering an
over the top comedy vehicle both lampooning and celebrating the worst excesses
of early 1990s violent action thrillers from the USA.
 |
| As one of the chief architects of the 'Dredd as muscle-bound violent quip-meister', Austin was a natural fit for this series. Words by Steve White and Brian Williamson |
Certainly, there was a
plot and there were recurring characters (although there’s a pretty high death
tally along the way), but mostly there’s violence, emoting and explosions,
alongside all the fake swearing they can fit onto each page.
Charming nonsense, and kind of completely forgotten as part of the Prog’s history, but weirdly it hasn’t aged a day since it was published, it’s like the movie Sharknado two decades before that style of entertainment was done on purpose. That said, it’s not really a fair swansong for an accomplished artist like Austin, who could’ve been better served by painting some of that period’s pastiche-y Dredds by Alan Grant, if you ask me.
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| Also bleeding nuns, combining sex appeal and violence appeal in one image for... reasons? Words by White and Williamson |
Charming nonsense, and kind of completely forgotten as part of the Prog’s history, but weirdly it hasn’t aged a day since it was published, it’s like the movie Sharknado two decades before that style of entertainment was done on purpose. That said, it’s not really a fair swansong for an accomplished artist like Austin, who could’ve been better served by painting some of that period’s pastiche-y Dredds by Alan Grant, if you ask me.
More on Mick Austin:
...and then you can see what top-end comics critic Douglas Wolk had to say about it.
Personal favourites:
Judge Dredd: Birdman; An Elm Street
Nightmare; The Candidates
Tales from the Doghouse: Froggy Natterjack; Ratty
Future Shocks: Opening Moves
Things to Come
...and this wonderfully sinister Finn cover.
*Technically based on
a computer game series not designed by Austin, but I imagine the characters in
the comic strip were all his.
**Editor Richard
Burton apparently took umbrage at this, although he misremembers the offending
artist as being David Roach in this interview. Speaking personally, I remember
the cover, remember vaguely thinking – even as a 12-year-old – that it was a
bit ‘why are you trying to make 2000AD look like a Lads’ mag?’, but beyond that
there was no actual controversy to my knowledge!
***Although I gather many a 2000AD writer went to Catholic School and learned to resent the church as little more than a hotbed of bullying.
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