OK, so some of these aren't actual photos, but either way manipulating existing images can be a tremendous amount of fun...

This photo of The Minutemen from Watchmen just cried out for an additional character... The one and only Big E, superhero editor of 2000 AD's offspring (and later spousal, which is kinda creepy) comic Tornado. If you don't already know why Big E should be included with the Minutemen, then you don't need to know.

The only photo of Big E I could find was pretty crude, having been scanned from a faded newsprint source, so it took quite a bit of work to clean it up. I'm pretty pleased with the results considering I spent less than an hour on it.

Competition entry for 2000 AD Online: "2000 AD characters presented in different art styles"

Grant Wood's American Gothic is probably one of the most copied and parodied paintings of the twentieth century, and because of that I initially shied away from using it, but the old guy's chin was so Dredd-like that I couldn't help myself.

The bulk of my work here was done through CGI, by manipulating and adjusting my already-built 3D models to the correct orientation, then pasting them over the original. I desaturated the colours of my additions to match, then gave the whole image a simple canvas-like texture to help blend everything together.

I'm fairly pleased with the final image - especially the Lawgiver in the old guy's hand - but I regret not spending more time on it: with a bit more effort I could have given him a complete Judge uniform.

Another entry for the same competition...

Adapted from an old Flash Gordon serial poster. Dredd's uniform here is deliberately "wrong", based on the idea that the old movie serials were fairly lax when it came to adapting such things.

If you have a pair of red/green (or red/cyan) 3D glasses you'll see why this image appears to have some ghosting...

Yet another entry for the same competition... I think this one speaks for itself.

And another one...

(I didn't win, by the way!)

After a couple of members had a bit of a disagreement on the message board for the art competition, another member posted a pic of a Prada handbag as a comment on the argument.

I couldn't resist making some modifications to the pic and posting it in reply. Unfortunately this one mysteriously wasn't included in the voting for the competition. :(

An entry for a different competition. This one was called "The End" and the basic idea was to create an image that represented the last moments of a 2000 AD character. I decided to interpret that as "something so horrible that it would kill off a character forever."

A couple of people on the 2000 AD message board pointed out that here Mr. Ferrell looks remarkably like the evil Chief Judge Cal from the Dredd saga "The Day the Law Died", and - though it pains me to admit it - Ferrell actually would make a great Judge Cal.

"Fyre of London" was created (i.e., clumsily slapped together) for the first issue of Sprout, a four-page fake comic that appeared in The Brentford Mercury... This installment is comprised of panels taken - without permission, naturally - from the first issues of DC Thomson's titles Bullet and The Crunch, and an old strip from Boy's World.

The second installment of "Fyre of London" works a lot better... Most of the art was taken from a story called "Who Killed Cassidy" in The Crunch (a tale about a motorcycle cop who becomes embroiled in an assassination conspiracy). I've no idea who wrote or drew the original: DC Thomson's comics never came with creators' credits!

You'll need Red/Green 3D glasses for this! The page is taken from the first ever Judge Dredd story, which appeared in 2000 AD #2 in 1977 (written by Peter Harris, drawn by Mike McMahon). To turn this into a stereoscopic comic, I had to chop up each panel and slide the images about a little... This is how it works:

1. The original panel as it appeared in 2000 AD prog 2

2. Background 1: Everything from the foreground removed, black replaced with red.

3. Background 2: As above, but with black replaced with cyan - and shifted a few pixels to the left.

4. Background 2 overlaid on background 1.

5. Background 2 transparency set to 50%.

6. Foreground 1: Everything from background removed, black replaced with red.

7. Foreground 2: As above, but with black replaced with cyan - and shifted a few pixels to the right.

8. Foreground 2 overlaid on foreground 1.

9. Foreground 2 transparency set to 50%.

10. The final image, all layers composited together.

Of course, I could have also chosen to separate the speech balloon so that it appeared to be closer to the "camera" than Dredd, but I decided that life was too short to do that for every panel, and it wouldn't have added much. However, this is what it would have looked like: