Kev O’Neill (artist), RIP

I was saddened to recover from a virus that knocked me down this week (not that one!) to the news of Kev O’Neill’s death earlier in the week.

Kev was a prolific comic artist over many decades, and is probably best known for his work on the likes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

For me he will always be first thought of as the artist for early Nemesis the Warlock in 2000AD and specifically for the cover of issue 239 of that comic.

There I was, aged 9 in a newsagent. I liked the idea of reading comics, but the ones I had been served to date, like the Beano, were repetitive and uninteresting. I perused the shelves of a local newsagent and then this image hit me straight in the brain:

I was hooked.

For those not familiar, 2000AD is a weekly UK comic which has 4 or 5 different stories running in each issue, of around 5 pages each. Beyond the cover story, there was plenty else for me to explore, such as Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper. I remained a regular reader of the comic for a decade, but this cover art has always been one of my enduring memories of it. His interior art brought the strange futuristic world of Termight to life in incredible detail.

Thanks, Kev O’Neill. you changed my life for the better.

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