McKie's illustrations often present highly detailed spacecraft against vividly colored backgrounds and high-tech constructions, examples of which include So Beautiful and So Dangerous (1979) and The Dome: Ground Zero (1998), as well as the cover for the 1978 Vangelis album Hypothesis.
[citation needed] McKie's earliest professional comics work was published in late 1970s/early '80s British anthologies like Brainstorm Comix, House of Hammer, and Pssst!.
McKie's pioneering work on The Dome: Ground Zero (Helix/DC Comics, 1998) employed some illustrative techniques that were considered novel at the time, involving a computer-driven process from start to finish.
[4] After writer Dave Gibbons finished the script, he produced page layouts using Adobe Photoshop which he then provided to McKie, who combined them with the letters and panel borders using Macromedia FreeHand.
[5] The result was computer-generated characters that were considered (at the time) more lifelike and preserved the recognizable biomechanical attributes of human anatomy without sacrificing texture and detail.