2000 AD #223

This August 1981 prog from IPC's 2000 AD — featuring Judge Dredd — spotlights Nemesis the Warlock with a cover teasing "The Alien Pit," and Kevin O'Neill's artwork makes an immediate impression: a massive, snarling alien creature dominates the image, its enormous fanged jaws dripping with slime, one shackled fist raised and a barbed tentacle coiling to the side, rendered in a sickly green palette that radiates menace. O'Neill's linework gives the beast a grotesque, almost sculptural weight that's hard to look away from. At 15p Earth Money, Prog 223 is a vivid snapshot of British comics at their most inventively strange.