Eoin Coveney is drawing on his experience in the comic world
COMIC books have become an important component of Cork City Library’s programme of events for Cork World Book Fest, particularly as a tool for encouraging literacy among teenagers. Once again, this year’s programme of Teen Day events will see the launch of the teen comic, a publication that is overseen by local comic creators, Alan Corbett and Colin O’Mahony.
Tasked with launching the comic, and with providing an open workshop on the graphic novel for teenagers, is Eoin Coveney.
While Corbett and O’Mahony are at the vanguard of a new generation of comic-makers, Coveney spent most of the last two decades working as a commercial illustrator, before establishing himself in the last five years as an artist on cult British weekly, 2000AD.
Coveney’s path may have been long, but the impulse to make comics was there from his childhood, a fact he was reminded of a number of years ago, when he discovered his parents had held on to his first comic, a version of the late 1970s The Incredible Hulk TV series, which he made on his school copybook.
“That was the beginning of my life-long lack of interest in school,” he says proudly. “My poor teachers. I was always drawing: they just couldn’t teach me. I wasnt interested, basically.”
Coveney’s departure from the academic path was sealed by his encounter with the thoroughly punk rock 2000AD, in 1977.
“I remember everyone talking in school about this new comic,” he recalls, his eyes lighting up at the memory.
It’s got dinosaurs in it and science fiction. You’re thinking: ‘how is that possible? How can you mix the two things? But I loved dinosaurs, so I got Prog 2 of 2000AD and that was it — I was hooked.
He didn’t realise it at the time, but as he pored over the artwork, he was absorbing the lessons of his heroes, the cartoonists: first Brian Bolland and then Cam Kennedy. He even had a cartoon published in the comic’s letter page, earning himself £10.
“I remember the thrill of seeing it,” he says wistfully.
Coveney did a foundation course in the Crawford art college, before transferring to Dún Laoghaire, to study illustration and graphics. After college, he moved to Germany, where he worked as a designer. In 1994, he heard that Will Eisner, the cartoonist regarded as the father of the graphic novel and described by Alan Moore as the man who gave comics their brains, was in Ireland to oversee an ambitious publication. Returning to Dublin, Coveney made an impression on the master.
“I showed him my portfolio and he was like ‘oh, this is great. You’ve got a great future’,” says Coveney.
“I was just floating. I thought ‘that’s it, I’m going to make it. I’m going to be famous’.”
Coveney got the job of team leader, and with writers Morgan Llywelyn and Michael Scott, he drew Ireland: A Graphic History, for Penguin.
Coveney is full of sage advice on comics and the mechanics of sequential art. At one point he notes: “Once you start to see your work in print, you learn an awful lot, because you learn what works and what doesn’t work, and that’s an education in itself.”
Soon after the Eisner project, Coveney was offered the Holy Grail for any writer or illustrator who’s a fan of 2000AD — a shot at iconic future lawman, Judge Dredd. It was a dream job, but Coveney is quite hard on himself about the result.
“Because I was young, arrogant, I thought I was great. And I did it too quickly,” he says candidly.
It got printed, but as soon as I saw it published, I thought ‘oh my God, I blew it’.
Coveney laboured away at his art, and had another breakthrough with a Future Shock story, and even got another shot at Dredd in 2014.
He then excelled on the Victorian supernatural thriller, The Alienist, a story he helped co-create and which recently enjoyed a second run.
He’ll be passing on some of his vast experience to next generation of comic book artists at City Library tomorrow.
