>>91349099Mainland European comics at the time (and still today) were geared towards either large-sized albums or anthologies like Metal Hurlant/Heavy Metal, with very high quality art and glossy paper. Since the 70s it had grown into an artform in and of itself, with guys like Giraud and Crepax and a whole generation of awesome spaniards basically going wild.
By comparison, british comics were still very much seen as an industrial thing, cheap mass-produced throwaway entertainment for kids printed in shitty recycled "bog paper", where 90% of the people who worked in it were really just working their way up to the "real" lifestyle magazines and whatnot. And although 2000AD did have a lot of euro influence in several of its strips, it still carried a lot of the british boys' comic DNA, with more straightforward action and characterization than the european surrealists.
The biggest connection between 2000AD and the mainland artist style came more from the artists who worked in it. British comics had a long tradition of hiring Spanish, Italian and South American artists for a lot of their comics, and 2000AD was no exception. So guys like Massimo Belardinelli and Carlos Ezquerra, who were coming from a changing euro school, brought those artistic sensibilities to 2000AD. The biggest example is arguably Dan Dare, who in the 50s was a very straight-laced space pilot with photorrealistic art, and when 2000AD got him he was fighting This Shit Right Here.
