RIP British Veteran Artist John M Burns

John M. Burns is, without a doubt, a legendary British comics creator. His extensive body of work across the last six decades and more has brought so much joy, evoked so much admiration and respect from fans and his peers, with Burns very much an artist’s artist. He is someone whose work is instantly recognisable and someone who maintained the highest quality throughout that extraordinarily long career full of page after page of perfect comic art.

Here at 2000 AD, as a way to both recognise the artistic contribution of the man, to celebrate his achievements, and to mark the occasion of his retirement, we wanted to say thank you to him for all the incredible work he’s produced through the years.

Throughout his life’s work, John’s art was always effortlessly dynamic and fluid, his characters emotive and expressive, and he was always so beautifully clear in his storytelling, no matter what the subject or how complex a page needed to be. And he painted just as well as he drew, with a mastery of colour that’s immediately obvious to anyone even casually glancing at one of his pages. A Burns piece was always beautiful, striking, and recognisable to his legions of fans around the world.

Although he produced art for so many British comics and newspapers for more than 60 years, John was perhaps best known for two main periods of his work, the first coming through the 1960s and ‘70s for his beautifully painted art on various TV tie-in strips, predominantly for Look-In, and the second coming with 2000 AD from the 1990s until his retirement.

2000 AD may have seemed a strange fit for an artist who was never shy of telling everyone that he wasn’t all that interested in science fiction and fantasy, but you certainly couldn’t tell that from the seemingly effortlessly thrilling art, beautiful, bold, unmistakably Burns, that graced the pages of 2000 AD or the Judge Dredd Megazine.

Burns is undoubtedly one of the great artists of British comics. Indeed, as several commentators have mentioned, he’s one of the last of the Golden Age of British comic artists to hang their brushes up, with his final work coming in his eighties, still as dynamic, as evocative, and as stunning as when we first saw it.

And, as Matt Smith, 2000 AD editor, tells us, he was all about the brushes – the last of the 2000 AD artists to stick to physical artwork rather than switch to digital.

From his very first appearance drawing a Garth  Ennis Judge Dredd in 1991 all the way through to April of this year with the finale to The Order, Burns brought greatness to 2000 AD and it was always an absolute pleasure to see his work.

John M. Burns was born in 1938 in Essex, England. With no formal art training, his work in comics began in the 1950s as an apprentice on various titles such as School Friend and Junior Express before his first major illustration work, in the Champion the Wonder Horse Annual of 1958.

In the 1960s, following his national service, Burns’ comic art and illustrations would appear more and more frequently in a multitude of comics and magazines including Eagle, Wham!, Diana, and TV Century 21 with strips including Wulf the Briton, Kelpie The Boy Wizard, Wrath of the Gods, Roving Reporter, Bids for Freedom, The Fists of Danny Pyke, Dolebuasters, and Dan Dare.

It was also during this time that he began what would become plentiful work as a newspaper strip cartoonist. Over many years, millions of newspaper readers would have seen his work on The Seekers (1966-1971), Danielle (1973-1974), George & Lynne (1976-1982), Jane (1985-1989), and Modesty Blaise (1978-1979), where he replaced the great Enrique Badía Romero.

His work at DC Thomson included lush full-colour adaptations of novels such as Great Expectations and Wuthering Heights in the girls’ weekly Diana where Burns made exceptional use of the higher quality production processes that allowed full-colour painted art to be reproduced. And the techniques and styles he developed here that best utilised that production process continued into the 1970s and 1980s as his art moved into comics and magazines such as TV Action, Countdown and, perhaps most fondly remembered, Look-In.

It wasn’t until 1991 that we first saw Burns’ work inside 2000 AD, giving an object lesson in creating stunning yet immediately readable pages with crystal clear storytelling for the comic at a time when this wasn’t always the case.

Obviously, Burns wasn’t brought in via the way of the Future Shock, but instead did that rarest of things, debuting on Judge Dredd on the Garth Ennis-written Garbage Disposal in Prog 738. He’d go on to work with Ennis for several serials, along with Dredds from John Wagner, Dan Abnett, and John Smith.

Although he only really had a handful of Dredds over the next decade-plus, his art put a real stamp on the stories he did illustrate, with his Dredd a memorable one, classic and strong, evoking a darker sensibility, practically a noir tone at times, bringing his signature painterly style and more than a touch of class to 2000 AD.

During this time, Burns’ art was seemingly on the comic adaptations of practically every popular show of the day, including UFO and Mission: Impossible for TV Action; Doctor Who in TV Comic, and The Tomorrow People, Kung Fu, Space 1999, The Bionic Woman, How the West was Won, Smuggler, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and Magnum P.I. in Look-In. This work on TV-related strips meant that a generation of children (and more than a few adults) grew up reading the exploits of their TV heroes and fell in love with Burns’ colourful, magnificent artwork.

https://2000ad.com/news/no-more-robots-no-more-trains-2000-ad-wishes-a-very-happy-retirement-to-the-legendary-john-m-burns/

Here’s artist Sean Phillips’ message about Burns’ passing also on Twitter

Terrible news. John was my favourite artist. A great loss to British comics. https://t.co/csLnIV9F5z

— Sean Phillips (@seanpphillips) January 1, 2024

And from fellow British artist Chris Weston as well

I’m so sad to hear this. What a huge talent John Burns was. Every single page of art he produced was a stunner. RIP, sir, & thank you for the joy your work gave me. https://t.co/yjPW7rvxcN

— Chris Weston – drowning not waving. (@westonfront) January 1, 2024

Also, Scottish comic artist Rob McCallum put up his own tribute on Twitter

I’m so sad to hear this. What a huge talent John Burns was. Every single page of art he produced was a stunner. RIP, sir, & thank you for the joy your work gave me. https://t.co/yjPW7rvxcN

— Chris Weston – drowning not waving. (@westonfront) January 1, 2024

Everyone here at Tripwire would like to offer our condolences to his family and friends