A Tribute to John M Burns – The 2000 AD Thrill-Cast
18th March 2024
At the very end of 2023, the legendary artist John M Burns sadly passed away. While well known amongst 2000 AD fans for his extensive work on stories including Judge Dredd, The Order, and Nikolai Dante, Burns’ career spanned six decades and endeared him to generations of readers thanks to enthralling and enchanting work on TV tie-ins such as Champion The Wonder Horse, Doctor Who, Mission Impossible, Buck Rogers, Magnum P.I., as well as Dan Dare and Kelpie the Boy Wizard, plus phenominally successful newspaper strips such as The Seekers, Danielle, George & Lynne, Jane, and Modesty Blaise.
Whether pen and ink or fully-painted, John’s work brought so much joy, evoked so much admiration and respect from fans and his peers alike. A true artist’s artist, he was 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.
In this episode, we pay tribute to this extraordinary talent by talking to just some of the people who knew him – Tim Quinn is a comics writer and editor who worked with John for many years, Sean Phillips is a multi-awardwinning artist, Robbie Morrison is the co-creator and writer of Nikolai Dante, and Paul Duncan is an editor and writer working on a book about John’s extraordinary legacy. Together, they paint a vivid picture of the man, his work, and his legacy.
And Paul Duncan has kindly provided higher resolution images of the art featured in this episode:
The 2000 AD Thrill-Cast is the award-winning podcast that takes you behind-the-scenes at the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic with creator interviews, panels, and more! You can subscribe to the Thrill-Cast on your favourite podcast app, whether that is Apple, Google, Stitcher, Spotify etc. You can also listen now at 2000AD.com/podcast or you can watch at youtube.com/2000adonline
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