Art For Art’s Sake Special: R.I.P. John Burns

by Richard Bruton

The loss of another comics giant, something that’s happening far too much these days, too many greats lost to us and to comics. Sadly, John Burns, perhaps the last of a generation of great British artists, passed away 29th December, 2023.

John had retired from comics earlier in the year following medical advice after a lifetime of work in comics. Sadly, that retirement was short-lived and we offer our condolences to John’s wife, Julia, his family, his friends, and all his many fans.

Burns was one of the absolute greats of British comics, beloved by fellow creators and readers alike for his work across many decades, work that was full of characterisation and dynamism, unmistakable and always quite beautiful. Burns was a real artist’s artist, as as can be seen from the many tributes to his work online since the announcement of his death.

He had been working in British and foreign comics and magazines for over 60 years, but was perhaps best known for two fabulous periods of work – the first in the ’60s through the end of the 70s with beautifully painted artwork in various TV tie-in strips including Look-In and a Hell of a lot of newspaper strip work, with the second coming more recently, from the 1990s onwards at 2000 AD. There were also the plentiful series for foreign publishers, both in Europe and the USA. He was a working artist who produced so much beautiful work, no matter how young or old he was.

So, raise a glass to the last of a classic generation of British comic artists, one of a kind – the great John Burns.

Born in Essex in 1938, Burns’ first work in comics came as an apprentice on various British comics, with his first major illustration work coming on a Champion the Wonder Horse Annual of 1958. Through the 1960s and 1970s Burns’ art really did seem to be everywhere, appearing in all of the big comics of the times, with strips including Wulf the Briton, Kelpie The Boy Wizard, Wrath of the Gods, Roving Reporter, The Fists of Danny Pyke, Dolebuasters, and Dan Dare, but it’s his prolific period at Look-In, TV Action, and Countdown that many will remember Burns for during this time. His painted art adorned TV strips 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, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and Magnum P.I. in Look-In. He was also a go-to artist for newspaper strips, with long runs from the 60s through to the late ’70s on The Seekers, Danielle, George & Lynne, Jane, Modesty Blaise and several more.

In the 1990s, he moved to 2000 AD, with his first appearance coming on a Garth Ennis Judge Dredd, ‘Garbage Disposal’ (Prog #738, 1991). He’d go on to work on several Dredds, a couple of episodes of Vector 13, Black Light, created by Burns, Dan Abnett, and Steve White, and Gordon Rennie’s 1997 Witchworld series.

It was in 1999 that Burns had his first really major series, sharing art duties with co-creator Simon Fraser on Nikolai Dante. So successful was Burns at showing us the Russian swashbuckler’s adventures that he and Fraser spent the remaining 13 years of the series alternating runs on the strip with Fraser. This was followed by the gangster thriller The Bendatti Vendetta in the Megazine with the other co-creator of Dante, Robbie Morrison.

After a long run on Dante, Burns further established himself in 2000 AD with The Order, created by himself and writer Kek-W. They’d already worked together on 2011’s sci-fi tale Angel Zero but The Order was something very different. Across seven series of time-twisting and genre hopping fantasy, Burns’ art shone through – this was an artist absolutely undiminished with age. His art in the final year of his life and career was every bit as glorious and beautiful as it always had been.

JOHN M. BURNS – 1938 – 2023

Kelpie The Boy Wizard (cover from the collection out later in 2024)