Archive Page 2129

April 18, 2022

Garry Leach Tribute – 1954–2022

Article at Comics Journal

His first work to make any impact with the public appeared in early 1978 in the short-lived underground magazine Graphixus, for which he drew several covers, posters and illustrations, along with a strip, and the comics’ logo. The strip itself, a 3-page self-written feature called "Succuba", was enormously impressive and revealed many of the elements that would come to typify his work: an innate understanding of anatomy; astonishingly detailed, delicate inking; high contrast lighting; an imaginative design sense; a futuristic setting; and pretty girls. However, prior to his Graphixus work he had already made a significant sale to a new British comic that was making serious waves among comic fans: 2000 AD. After leaving art school in 1977 he began working on samples for 2000 AD and made an immediate sale with a lengthy Dan Dare strip he both wrote and drew, rendered in sumptuous washes of grey paint. Since publishers IPC were not in the habit of letting their artists write their own strips, it’s likely that Garry created the whole strip himself and, realizing its quality, the editorial team then decided to buy it. The strip was published in 1978’s 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special, though his first work to appear in the comic was actually a short Tharg's Future Shocks strip in issue #58 (or Prog 58, as the comic eccentrically termed it) in April. These early breakthroughs were followed by a Death Planet cover (Prog 70) and his first inking assignments for the comic, working over pencils by Trev Goring and Dave Gibbons on Dan Dare (Progs 79-84) and Brian Bolland on Judge Dredd (Progs 94 and 95). He had arrived.

Cover released for Alan Moore's first short-story collection, Illuminations – Yahoo News

Illuminations will be published on Oct. 11 in the United States

Original page April 30, 2022