John M. Burns (1938 – 29 December 2023) was an English comics artist, with a career stretching back to the late 1950s.

Biography

His initial work was as an illustrator for Junior Express and School Friend. He also worked on the "Wrath of the Gods" in Boys' World. Later in the 1960s, Burns worked on TV Century 21 and its sister magazines, including the Space Family Robinson series in Lady Penelope. For a while he drew daily comics strips for newspapers The Daily Sketch, The Daily Mirror and The Sun, including The Seekers, Danielle and, for a period succeeding Enrique Romero during 1978–79, Modesty Blaise. Burns moved on to illustrate TV tie-in strips for Look-in, always scripted by Angus Allan. He also worked on the title story for Countdown. Burns was already well known by the start of the 1980s, but it was when he made the crossover to 2000 AD (along with fellow Look-in alumni Jim Baikie and Arthur Ranson) that his position in British comics was cemented. In 1991 Burns began by working on Judge Dredd. By his own admission, Burns did not enjoy drawing science fiction strips, and the uniform of Judge Dredd he found unpleasant to draw. However, in 2007 Burns began working on Nikolai Dante, another science fiction strip. Burns co-created (with Robbie Morrison) a contemporary adventure strip, The Bendatti Vendetta, for the Judge Dredd Megazine; this was rare for the title in having no science fiction or fantasy elements at all. In 2008, he finished an adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, whose script was rendered by Amy Corzine, for UK publisher Classical Comics. He previously worked on similar adaptions of Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore and, later, Wuthering Heights by Brontë's sister Emily. In October 2023 he announced his retirement. He died in a hospital on 29 December 2023. His new series Nightmare, New York, for 2000 AD, was published posthumously in 2024.

Interviews