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September 29, 2026
Every week, 2000 AD brings you the best works of art in the galaxy and 2000 AD Uncovered covers takes you behind the scenes with the lead artists responsible for our top covers – join bloggers Richard Bruton and Pete Wells as they uncover the best covers from 2000 AD!
A return to the front of the Prog this week for Herne and Shuck Artist Lee Milmore, showing us the demonic pleasures that lie within as David Barnett and Milmore give us part three of the latest Herne and Shuck series, Assault on the Stone.
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Lee Milmore is another one of those exciting new art droids who first caught the attention of the Mighty One with his victory in the 2022 2000 AD & Thought Bubble talent show.
Since then, he has regularly appeared in the pages of Prog and Judge Dredd Megazine. He has made the wonderful Relict with Honor Vincent, a horror story, In The Wood, written by John Tomlinson and Tales From The Black Museum, The Ugly Stick, written by David Barnett. And it is with Barnett that Milmore appears most frequently in the pages of Prog, as they have taken the continuing adventures of Herne and Shuck, the ragged wizard at large and his demonic black dog, from a pair of Tharg’s 3Rillers to multiple full series now.
Herne & Shuck’s latest series, Storming The Stone, takes our merry band of messers into the depths of Stonehenge in their continued attempts to do the right thing, facing all sorts of nasty things, human and definitely demonic.
And that’s a perfect introduction to that absolutely demonic Prog cover this week, Milmore’s second Prog cover, and his third cover overall. So let’s see what he has to say about it, huh?
LEE MILMORE: My second cover for 2000 AD, it is a great privilege to be able to do it, I am happy. That’s how it came about.
While working on a gruesome little scene from the latest Herne & Shuck book… Assault on the stone – I thought the perspective of Ellen Bord as a head in a jar being boiled and crushed by a demon must have been, how should I say… intense. I immediately started thinking about the striking image I could create on the cover, turning the viewer into a head in a jar with Moloch approaching them. I also thought it would be fun to decipher the program and logo in the process to increase verisimilitude.
And here you go, that same scene Lee talks about in part 3 of Storming the Stone… not a good way to do it… first Lee’s black and white art, and then the finished version…
LEE MILMORE: First things first: will your greenery think it deserves a place at the front of your sacred organ?
I made a draft. My drafts are just that, as you can see.
LEE MILMORE: Tharg deemed it acceptable after much squirming and pleading, as long as it kept my crying self out of his presence, as I was starting to feel nauseous.
I slipped away, delighted. I didn’t feel any shame, since us art droids are programmed to be miserable and pathetic when it comes to trying to get a little work on Galaxy’s Greatest.
Ok, now I need to draw a cover from the year 2000 AD! Many greats have appeared on the cover; super intimidating. I like to use a good amount of reference in my work, so I decided to try to get the pose.
It’s harder than you might imagine to achieve the look of a muscular demon crushing a bell jar as seen from inside the jar. Obviously I have the physique; I’m an artist, and it’s well known that we’re all very torn, but I didn’t have a bell jar on hand to place my camera on.
I took a photo with a grimace and then retouched it a bit to exaggerate the perspective and add skull details. Unfortunately, the skulls have covered my grimacing face in the image provided, but you’ll have to imagine how tough I looked. I also forgot to take off the hoodie, which would cause problems later when drawing the torn body. However, if you look closely, you might be able to make out my hump, which was also useful for reference.
LEE MILMORE: I don’t remember exactly what came next, but I drew an approximation in Photoshop, just as lines, or I drew it on watercolor paper using reference, possibly with my light box. Mainly, that would have been having good hands.
I use a micron to add the lines, but I don’t worry about the quality of the lines at this point, knowing what I intend in future steps.
I apologize for the bad pictures of the drawing stages, I was using my phone and just photographed to see it small. I often find that zooming out on an image can help you see if it works, similar to turning it around.
LEE MILMORE: I often went straight to the ink work after this stage, but I seem to have used a pencil to help me place the shadowed areas in the image. After all, this is my second 2000AD cover; It’s something important and I don’t want to spoil it.
LEE MILMORE: Then I use a brush, ink and water to work on the image. I don’t really have any more process shots of this, but I love this stage, and it obviously underpins the entire artwork, so I better be able to happily immerse myself in it.
LEE MILMORE: Once I’m happy with the drawing and inks, I scan it and then take it into Photoshop to color it.
The color is a little challenging for me. I enjoy it, but it’s not as natural a process as splashing inks. You’d think I’d be a natural colorist. As a droid fresh off the conveyor belt, I was an art painting student and then reprogrammed to do digital design (mostly websites) for many years until Tharg needed me and upgraded me to a full art droid. I think he said something like “Bring me that rusty old model off that top shelf, it doesn’t matter, they’re all interchangeable. Maybe you’ll dust it off first.” Something like that…
Fortunately, the base colors are not very challenging. It’s a big red demon and I’d like to offset that with a cooler color. Basically, I draw a gradient from red to purple and place a blue in the small space that Moloch doesn’t fill.
LEE MILMORE: The next significant color is the bone of their horns and skull, which forms the nose of the upper jaw. The idea I always had here was that instead of our Moloch being simply a bull, he should be a bull formed in part from the physical host he possesses, and when he reveals his true self, Alex’s skull slides forward into the rearranged flesh and takes a position that forms the bull’s snout. I explain it because, like the best jokes, it’s better if you have to explain them. Do I think it’s true?
LEE MILMORE: I add some yellows. I’ve realized that I’m a little obsessed with yellow. I actively lowered it in this image along the way, but I like the idea of the demon being full of fire and glowing in places like the eyes.
LEE MILMORE: At this point I start painting in some cooler ambient lights and some edges of the broken glass. I also highlight the bubbles inside the jar and add a hint of pressure on your palms and thumbs, giving a lot of detail.
I also added my signature at this point. I struggle with my signature. Most of your life you only need to worry about your signature like a scribble on a delivery file or something, but now that I’m a famous art droid, it suddenly seems a lot more important what my scribble looks like. So it changes too frequently. Even though it’s totally different from the last time you saw my signature, I promise you it’s still me.
LEE MILMORE: Ok, now we are putting the image together. I add shine to the glass to make it more obvious that we are looking at Moloch through the glass. As soon as I do this, I start to feel the image I had in my head from the beginning taking shape.
LEE MILMORE: The last thing is to add the destroyed logo. I’ve tried it several times and I’m not very happy with the way it looks. I look for a Productiser online and can wrap the logo in a glass jar. The 3D program corrects the curvature, all I have to do is break it up a little. Ok, ok, I KNOW it would actually print backwards, but I took a little artistic license, because you can’t run the logo backwards, it’s not AD 0002, it’s fucking 2000 AD, man, cool. Sorry, maybe I should cool it down…
And that’s it, I hope you like it and I hope I have made the Galaxy prouder.
Oh, the last thing before I go back to work. I think the strangest thing about making art are the little problems. There is a small shape in this image that made me go from being unhappy to being quite happy with the piece. I’ve realized that almost everything I do is slightly clumsy. I think it’s because my face is slightly crooked. In this picture, it was the hump on the bull’s back, it was just right and I couldn’t stop looking at it, so I added a little colored triangle and the anxiety was resolved.
And Lee gave us one last image to pore over: an image that detects the difference of what he’s talking about with that final little color triangle…
Looking at it now, I think I probably have a loose circuit board. I think many artists must have these almost imperceptible frustrations in their process, at least I hope it’s not just me.
Oh, Lee, believe us, it’s not just you: the number of art droids who suffer terrible attacks of self-doubt in their lives making art! You’re just fitting into a very familiar pattern of droid art, whether new or long established, and you’re filled with all those doubts and thoughts about imposter syndrome. You are not alone! (Seriously, everyone should start their own self-help group.)
There you have it, covering issue #3 for the Milmore droid, the second in the Prog. It’s a marvel, and knowing the process he went through to make it happen only adds to the overall impression that it’s a very good cover.
you can find 2000 AD Prog 2502 from anywhere The Galaxy’s Greatest is sold, including the 2000 AD web store. It’s now available in the UK and US from October 14. Be sure to visit your local comic book store right now to ask them to order it for you!
As for more from Lee, be sure to come back and read the interview we did with him and Honor Vincent about their first 2000 AD band, Widowhere. Plus, we interviewed Milmore and writer David Barnett about the second 3 Tharg Riller staring Herne and Shuck, Maxwell’s Demonhere. As for the two covers before this one, you can find Lee’s uncovered covers for his first 2000 AD cover for Prog 2344 here, and his second cover for Tharg, for magazine 464 here. And of course, go to his website and follow him on Twitter.