No. 126 Gina Hart

First Prog: 730

Final Prog: 979

First Meg: 2.01 (aka 21)

Final Meg: 3.12 (aka 115)

Art under the colours by Chris Weston

Total appearances: 71

-including two Poster Progs, but not including a bunch of credits on 'Lawman of the Future'.

Colouring credits:

Judge Dredd

Rogue Trooper

Venus Bluegenes

Kelly's Eye

Maniac 5

Tyranny Rex

Luke Kirby

Red Razors

Darkness Visible

Notable characteristics:

Bright, bold and cheerful.

On Gina:

A whole slew of colouring specialists came to the Prog following the switch to all colour, all the time with Prog 723. Gina Hart was already something of a name in the comic colouring world thanks to her work on Rupert Bear and UK Transformers. On 2000AD, for a few years, she was one of the more consistent of the new names, filling in between the lines on such venerable inksmiths as:

Simon Coleby, Cliff Robinson, Paul Marshall, Brett Ewins, Steve Parkhouse and John Ridgway.

Words by John Wagner; Art by Cliff Robinson

I confess almost total ignorance as to the techniques available to colourists at this time. It was pretty much pre-computers (certainly well before Carlos Ezquerra's early experiments on Wilderlands), and whatever methods / materials she used, Hart clearly wasn't going the fully-painted route of S. Bisley or C. Critchlow. These days of early 90s colour can look unsophisticated compared to the more modern computer-based work, but there's quite a bit of charm and plenty of range to Hart's pages. Someone somewhere who knows what they're talking about needs to write up a history of colouring in the UK comics scene!

On the whole her colours were pleasingly bright and lurid, an especially good fit for that period of Coleby and Ewins' work, to pick out two names. On Judge Dredd in particular I appreciate this approach. Given that the strip is a satire set in a fascist dictatorship, it's a remarkably cheerful-looking dystopia, with blues and greens and pinks aplenty. A trick that ups the comedy and generally helps put you on the side of Dredd, right before you remember that he's enforcing the law for a tyrannical regime against deeply oppressed citizens.

Violence made palatable by super-pink blood spatter.
Words by John Wagner; Art by Yan Shimony

More death in pink!
Words by Garth Ennis; Art by Simon Coleby

Picking out the foreground
Words by Garth Ennis; Art by Gary Erskine

The simple colour choices here really makes the ugliness pop!
Words by John Smith; Art by Ashley Sanders

Matching Robsinon's detail-focussed work
Words by John Wagner; Art by Cliff Robinson

It's not just dayglo colours. On Parkhouse's version of Luke Kirby, Hart delivers sombre, nostalgia-filled tones...

It's the early 1960s, innit
Words by Alan McKenzie; Art by Steve Parkhouse

While the future noir of Kelly's Eye is much more muted, with pastel neons of all things. The story may not have been all that, and Ewins was, arguably, no longer at this peak - but between Ewins and Hart there's something witty going on that sells the impossibility of cliffhanger endings involving an indestructible hero.

This strip is not to be taken too seriously; it's John Wick 30 years ahead of its time...
Words by Alan McKenzie; Art by Brett Ewins

When it comes to the gonzo cliche-fest of Maniac 5, there's room to play with mood lighting...

The colour of evil science is green.
Words by Mark Millar; Art by Steve Yeowell

As well as the colour of violent death in Dredd

Yup, more pink!
Words by Garth Ennis; art by Gary Erskine

See also the visual puns of blue-skinned Rogue Trooper battling in the blue ice of Nu-Earth* Sahara

The overall atmosphere of this strip, mostly from the look, elevates it above many a Fr1day tale.
Words by Michael Fleisher; art by Simon Coleby

Darkness Visible, that desperately unsung gem of a horror story, combines both tricks of vivid reality with sinister mood lighting:

Sometimes you just need the red, yellow and black of hellfire.
Words by Nick Abadzis; Art by John Ridgway

My guess is Hart fell off the 2000AD train with the switch from the Burton/McKenzie/Tomlinson years to the Bishop era. Certainly she turned up colouring on Sonic the Comic, so presumably Mr Burton still had her number.

More on Gina Hart:
This very mini biography on Women in Comics is pretty much all I could find (or its copy on Wikipedia)

Personal Favourites:

Judge Dredd: a Clockwork Pineapple

Kelly's Eye: Armed Response

Maniac 5

Darkness Visible

I do like a nice calm blue sky for a nuclear blast contrast.
Words by Peter Hogan; Art by Lee Sulllivan (I think)

*I'll be honest, I completely lost track of which planet Fr1day is actually on in the Michael Fleisher series. I know he left whichever planet the original War Machine Hill 392 was on. Did our hero end up on the actual Earth, which has flipped its poles or something, Meltdown Man style? I know the Sahara was frozen for some reason! Or was it a new Nu-Earth?