First Prog: (as art assistant): 1
(as cover artist): 1
(as strip artist): 4/24 (He
provided an in-story comics-style Flesh! advert in Prog 4, then a full Future
Shock in Prog 24. And in fact he was the writer in both cases as well!)
Final Prog: (as art editor):
85
(as regular artist): Prog 524
-but he came back to finish
Nemesis the Warlock in Prog 2000, and then in Prog 1280 he had a page in 25th
anniversary lark ‘A night to Remember’. I guess he may yet be lured back one
day. Please?
Total appearances: 280
(as artist): 195
-including his hand in
creating Diceman, and Metalzoic, but not including his work on Toxic!, 2000
AD’s one-time rival from the early 90s.
 |
| Kevin O'Neill uses his own strip to poke fun at his tendency towards detail... Words by Pat Mills |
Creator credits:
Bonjo from Beyond the Stars; Ro-Busters*;
Nemesis the Warlock; Metalzoic; D'ash Decent; Captain Klep
Other art credits:
Judge Dredd
MACH O (a hilariously weird
tale from an old Annual)
A handful of Future Shocks,
one-offs and Tales of Tharg
 |
| The Blitzspear Words by Pat Mills |
Notable character creations:
Nemesis
Torquemada - arguably several creations in one character! He had a look with a helmet, then a look with a face destroyed by a teleporter accident, then a version as a phantom. Amazing.
Purity Brown
The Terror Tube - something of a character all by itself.
Armageddon - the giant robot with missiles for shoulders and a buzzsaw for hair
Notable characteristics:
Thin lines; lots of
detail; having an inherently scary art style**; angles and corners; ooze; being
anti-establishment;
 |
| A random selection of Cursed Earth mutants - most seen on this panel only! That's commitment. Words by Wagner & Grant |
On Kevin:
O’Neill’s art was a
major part of my introduction to 2000 AD, via reprints of Nemesis the Warlock Book 1 in the earliest issues of the Best of
2000 AD monthly. It is impossible to overstate how joyous and brain-exploding
it was to behold. It managed to be both accessible and impossible, masterful
yet scrawly, and just full of so much detail that poring over the pages even
today, after so many readings, still yields new delights. I wanted to spend
hours copying it, but also never imagined being able to create that kind of
thing from my own head.
 |
| This. This is the kind of thing I wanted to be able to draw. Illuminated borders made of living wax. |
What makes it all the
more amazing is that O’Neill very much appears to have learned his skill on the
job. As art assistant on the Prog from the very start, O’Neill had the painful
job of censoring and re-drawing all sorts of work by artists with very
different styles – sometimes just to make the page fit better, but often to cut
out blood, gore and general ultra-violence that the management feared (but the
readers loved). So that meant finding the ability to simulate everyone from
Ramon Sola to Dave Gibbons to Massimo Belardinelli. I’ve not tried to find
doctored panels, but I bet it’d be tough.
 |
| Early work from Kevin O'Neill (sadly I can't remember where from or who wrote it!) |
One of the jobs he
liked least was whiting out artist’s signatures, something IPC management
insisted on in the dark days of the 1970s. On the back-room side of things,
Kevin O’Neill’s greatest achievement was the insertion of the Creator credits
box into the pages of a mainstream newsstand comic.
 |
| There's one, in the bottom left corner. In amongst all the other gorgeous clutter. |
He also, I think, had
the job of filling up stray bits of space with art, most notably including
sticking Tharg’s head in the middle of the cover of Prog 1, but also rounding
out many a Nerve Centre and house ad periphery. And, more impressively, filling
up pages with imaginative weirdness such as the ‘7 Wonders of the Galaxy’
pin-ups.****
 |
| Genuinely awesome |
So anyway, Kevin
O’Neill wasn’t as such hired to be a strip illustrator, but he got his foot in
the door through art bodging and periphery. Remarkably, his first published strip
work was on stories he wrote and drew (and maybe lettered as well!). This
covered an early Future Shock, and
2000 AD’s first irreverent cartoon strip, Bonjo
from Beyond the Stars. The fact that this isn’t especially good doesn’t
matter! It helped sew seeds of greatness to come, including the early, deeply
cutting episodes of Captain Klep,
(from its Tornado days, and then the extended run of the Flash Gordon parody Dash Decent. In these short one-page
jobs alone you can see his work improving.
 |
| Washed-up superheroes, some 10 years before Marshal Law. Words by Dave Angus |
 |
| While D'ash Decent fights alien eyeballs, O'Neill (or was it writing partner Dave Angus?) calls his own good taste into question. |
But the real meat came
with his foray into Ro-Busters. I have an idea that it was Kevin O’Neill who
dreamed up the basic look of Ro-Jaws, and maybe Hammer-Stein (and perhaps some
others), but I don’t know for sure. What I do know is that the handful of
episodes he drew were dead good.
 |
| Its the Star Wars cantinas scene, but with robots. Words by Pat Mills |
It’s also a matter of
record that the tube escape sequence he drew for The Fall & Rise of Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein ended up directly
inspiring the story Terror Tube, (a
deliberate two finger salute to IPC management, who hated it), which in turn
led directly to Nemesis the Warlock,
the finest piece of graphic fiction devised by man. Already a master of detail
and imagination, it’s at this point that Kevin O’Neill stopped being an
assistant who dabbled in drawing to being one of the premier comics artists to
grace the UK.
 |
| The original tube network Words by Pat Mills |
You can tell O’Neill
poured his heart and soul into Nemesis the Warlock. There’s just so much going
on in each page! Book 1 was plagued with gaps in its publication schedule, no
doubt because of the extra efforts he went to. Amazingly, he re-did (and
coloured) large chunks of it later on so it’d fit better into the original
reprint of Nemesis that was published in small American-size comics.
Even more amazingly,
the story goes that what we currently know as Book IV episode 1 was actually
the first bit of Nemesis that O’Neill drew, in all it’s mechano-steampunk
glory. At first deemed too weird, Pat Mills managed to make it fit later. And
of course in the 21st century, steampunk continues to be all the
rage, not least in the pages of 2000 AD. Visionary stuff.
 |
| Delight in the details. And the horse bag. Words by Pat Mills |
Nemesis Book II was
given to another artist to allow O’Neill a longer lead time with Book II, which
did eventually see print in a continuous run. And by gosh was it spectacular.
Huge great scenes straddled the pages with monsters of design work, battle
carnage, interspersed with quiet moments of emotion.
But, sadly this heralded the beginning of the
end of his time with 2000 AD.
It was around this
point that American comics took an interest, despite finding his work
inherently scary. I don’t know the exact chronology, but he must’ve worked on
the original version of Metalzoic soon after. This was commissioned and printed
as part of DC’s first wave of original graphic novels, but was also run in 2000
AD (in black and white), I guess in a similar deal to the current Judge Dredd
Megazine slot reserved for creator-owned work.
Metalzoic is mental.
It’s Pat Mills, so the idea and ideals loom larger than the plot, but in many
ways this is something of a proto-Image comics book. You get sucked in by the
art, you want to know more about these weird prehistoric-looking robot
creatures, although you don’t necessarily find out that much about them.
O’Neill is on top form throughout.
 |
| Mechanical violence Words by Pat Mills |
It also marked a development
in his style. Metalzoic feels of a piece with his Nemesis work, but he then
delivered a handful of Dredd episodes in a chunkier, more robust, slightly more
polished look. Like this:
 |
| Dredd meets his mutant counterpart Words by Wagner & Grant |
In turn, he produced
Torquemada the God, a 5-part bit of lunacy that paved the way for new artist
John Hicklenton to take on the main Nemesis series.
 |
| Torquemada undergoes his umpteenth mutation Words by Pat Mills |
 |
| At home with the Sturns Words by Pat Mills |
I fear I’ve not
remotely done justice to O’Neill’s skills as a storyteller, and an artist who
conveys mood, tone and character as well as any of them. Nemesis the Warlock is
an odd beast of a story. It pushes a lot of buttons, including horror, humour,
anger, action, social commentary – all of which its various artists have been
adept at drawing out. But although this mix is in its DNA, it’s surely O’Neill
who made sure us readers got it right from the very start.
 | |
| Pure horror Words by Pat Mills |
 |
| Pure action wwith N'Kognito. Nice! Words by Pat Mills. |
 |
| Supernatural weirdness Words by Pat Mills |
As I understand it,
he’s full-time at work with Alan Moore on the continuing exploits of the League
of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But maybe, just maybe, the right job will come
along to get him a page or 5 in the Galaxy’s Greatest comic?
Personal favourites:
Ro-Busters: the Fall & Rise of Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein (he drew certain key
episodes)
Terror Tube and Killer Watt
Dash Decent
Nemesis the Warlock: book I, opening episodes of Book IV; the Ego
Trip
Torquemada the God
Metalzoic
Judge Dredd: Varks
Shok!
More on Kevin O’Neill
He’s one of the
leading contributors and anecdotalists to feature in Future Shock!
Here are a couple of
marathon-length, career-spanning interviews with:
An appreciation of Nemesis the Warlock on the Utopian Impulse blog
 |
| Last word to Judge Death Words by Wagner & Grant |
*The internet doesn’t
seem to want to credit any specific artist with the design of Ro-Busters, and specifically the
characters Hammer-stein, Ro-Jaws, Mek-Quake and Howard ‘Mr. 10 percent’ Quartz.
I have a strong suspicion that Kevin O’Neill has more to do with it than Carlos
Pino or Ian Kennedy, who drew the first published episodes. I apologise
unreservedly if I’m wrong!
**I expect most
readers here will have heard (more than once!) the wonderful anecdote about
management-types at DC comics declaring O’Neill’s art to be too scary for young
readers. They couldn’t point to any one panel or depiction, just the whole
style!
What I think people
overlook with this story is that, essentially, those idiots were onto
something. O’Neill’s scratchy, wild-eyed characters and settings ARE scary.
They twist the brain into unusual angles, and his background detail does seem
to be filled with illicit imagery and iconography (it isn’t in things like Nemesis; it often IS when you get to Marshall Law and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Frankly, I think it’s a badge
of honour for O’Neill, and it also puts him at the forefront of a 2000 AD
tradition – slotting artists into a children’s comic whose work is, somehow,
very adult. Hicklenton, Harrison, Bisley, Weston - I’m looking at you! (at
least, these were the prime examples from my youth. I’d add plenty of
contemporary greats, too – Langley, Davis, Carter)
***It IS true that
many of 2000 AD’s top art talent found work beyond the comic after a few years,
but one imagines the US
editors who lured them away with promises of hard cash / a decent living wage
would have found out who they were without needing the credit boxes. Frankly,
the old comics practice of not crediting the creators involved just seems
weird.
****2000AD has played
host to a number of weird and wonderful one-page oddities that are something of
a hidden part of the comic’s history. O’Neill’s ‘wonders’ were preceded by the
Supercovers, but later Progs had Mick
Austin’s ‘Things to Come’ or Shaky Kane’s ‘Beyond Belief’ to name just two
examples.
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