As many readers of 2000 AD will be aware - and if they're not, they really should be - Strontium Dog actually started out in another comic, the much-missed Starlord. One of only two comics to merge with 2000 AD in a time when it wasn't uncommon for a comic to have dozens of ancestors.

The strip is set in a distant future where the widespread release of Strontium-90 during a nuclear war has caused thousands of humans to be born with mutations, some rather mild and almost unnoticeable, some extremely severe. There are few jobs available for mutants because the "norms" don't want anything to do with them. Pretty much the only real job for a mutie is bounty-hunting for the Search/Destroy agency.

Johnny Alpha is one such SD agent, or Strontium Dogs as they are commonly known. The series was created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, which effectively makes Johnny Alpha the brother of their other co-creation Judge Dredd.

Strontium Dog has been running on and off since 1978. Alpha himself was rather infamously killed off twenty years ago in a story called "The Final Solution", but his death has since been shower-scened out of existence: he returned in the year 2000 and since then we've all been pretending that "The Final Solution" never happened.

The badge worn by the Search/Destroy agents, otherwise known as Strontium Dogs.

A wonderful, almost organic, design by the legendary Carlos Ezquerra.

My original plan was to create models of all parts of Johnny Alpha's armour, but once the helmet was done I never went back to the rest of it... One day, maybe.

Johnny Alpha's furry alien companion. The main reason I decided to model The Gronk was because it's very tricky to get fur and hair right (one doesn't learn much by only ever doing things that are easy).

Another competition entry for 2000 AD Online, "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants": the idea is that members will re-create images and scenes originally drawn by the great Carlos Ezquerra.

I was very tempted to go with The Stainless Steel Rat, but Carlos' original image of Johnny Alpha and Judge Dredd together (from the final page of the Judgement Day saga) is one of my all-time favourites. I couldn't not do it!

Most of the parts of Dredd's uniform were already done (some needed a little tweaking here and there), so for him I only had to create the boots and gloves. For Alpha, I already had the gun, badge and helmet, but the helmet didn't look right so I scrapped it and started again. Everything else had to be created from scratch.