First Prog (as writer): 609
(as assistant editor/editor):
828
Latest Prog: (as
writer): 1711
(as editor): 977
First Meg (as
writer): 309
(as editor): 3.13 (aka #116)
Latest Meg (as
writer): 309
(as editor): 3.21 (aka #124)
Total appearances: 283
(as writer): 127
-not including his stint as
editor of Judge Dredd: Lawman of the Future
Creator credits:
Armoured Gideon
Mercy Heights / Tor Cyan
Other writing credits:
Judge Dredd (sometimes
co-writing with Alan McKenzie)
Plenty of Future Shocks / one
offs
The Space Girls*
Brigand Doom
Rogue Trooper
Notable character creations:
Frank Weitz
Armoured Gideon
Tor Cyan**
Notable characteristics:
Jokes, especially the
kind the involve poking fun at SF/fantasy tropes that take themselves too
seriously. Unrequited love; romantic banter. Also, and I don’t know how to find
evidence to back it up, but Tomlinson’s work, both as writer and editor, always
gave the impression that everything was meant, primarily, to be a good solid bit
of fun.
 |
| You can tell he doesn't take himself too seriously, can't you. Art by Trevor Hairsine |
On John:
As an editor, John
Tomlinson is indelibly linked with 2000 AD’s difficult period in the early-mid
1990s. As a writer, he’s one of the rare few who managed to epitomise features
of both sides of that same difficult period. Tellingly, he’s one of a handful
of ‘newer’ droids who got writing work from both the old regime
(Burton/McKenzie) and the new (Bishop/Diggle). Apart from anything else, I
choose to glean from this that Tomlinson is a decent guy that other people want
to work with!
His breakout 2000 AD
hit was Armoured Gideon, which felt
like something of a bizarre one-off in its first outing, but later morphed into
a recurring feature of long-form but also stand-alone series that was most
noteworthy for being genuinely funny, in a Terry Pratchett way. Although he’s
had a few one-off stories in recent years, his most recent triumph was a stint
on Tor Cyan during the Andy Diggle
years, a recurring feature of short stories noteworthy for being exceptionally
bleak.
 |
| Fun with words. Art by Simon Jacob |
 |
| Tense action. Art by Trevor Hairsine |
So that’s showing decent
range right there.
Parsing editorial
credit is notoriously difficult, as all I’ve got to go on are the Prog / Meg
issues under his tenure (Progs 828-977, but 915-977 especially). The
commissions for the stories that saw print may have happened well before that!
Nonetheless, there are perhaps some specifics to pick up on.
 |
| Vector 13: big in the 90s Art by Dougie Braithwaite |
In the overwhelming
positive column, there’s the fact that John Wagner was lured back to the Prog
as the regular Dredd writer, starting off with a bang on Conspiracy of Silence, featuring hot new art wunderkind Mark
Harrison, and leading directly into Wilderlands.
As a stand alone story, it’s not the best mega-epic in itself, but the build-up
was great, and the whole thing marked something of a turning point for Wagner,
who has much more obviously treated Judge
Dredd (the series) as one continuous narrative. Sure, it kind of always had
been, but somehow the whole Mechanismo/Tenth
Planet bit felt like a much more carefully planned attempt to get long term
plot threads going. An editorial suggestion?
Also positive, the
FrIday version of Rogue Trooper got
an injection of new blood with writer Steve White and artists Henry Flint and
Steve Tappin. Perhaps less wisely, an attempt was made to tie in the new Rogue
with the old, but at least Tomlinson had the decency to claim this unholy mess
for himself by tying the whole thing off with Tor Cyan, his own contribution to the Genetic Soldier mythos.
Strontium Dogs was entering a bit of a mythos mess of its own
at the same time, with Peter Hogan taking over from Garth Ennis. The critical
consensus is that these stories were just not good. My feeling is that Hogan
was being too slow to get to whatever point he was trying to make – he was cut
off before we could find out what that may have been. I would say he was at
least using the characters respectfully (see also: Hogan’s version of Robo-Hunter). More on this another time.
The point stands that Tomlinson was trying to make something of it all, to keep
the much-beloved franchise going.
While the results
weren’t exactly dazzling, I’d also credit Tomlinson with trying some things out
to see what might work. Most openly this includes Urban Strike!, a video game tie-in that was an open piss-take of
OTT action film clichés, with a lot of excuses for extreme death. It also
covers Harlem Heroes: Cyborg Death Trip.
Editors polished the script with the same veneer of snarling silliness, doing
enough to make it smile-worthy.
 |
| Urban Strike!: exploitation moive in comics form. Words by Steve White; Art by Mick Austin |
Basically, Tomlinson
was making the most of what he could with some unpublishable work that 2000 AD
was obliged to publish. Further, he was in charge when the 1995 Judge Dredd
film came out, meaning he had to a) push Dredd hard (double stories ran for a
time there, with Wagner at the front and Mills at the back) and b) refrain from
saying anything negative about the film, or even publish especially negative
letters. His year-long stint as Megazine editor soon after was a last, hopeful
attempt to keep as much new strip as possible, but sadly it didn’t translate to
improved sales, (leaving Bishop to step in and essentially turn it into the
Wagner Dredd + reprint magazine for a couple of years). Tough times!
Again in the
experimental vein, the Prog had room for follow-up stories to unclassifiable
stuff such as Soul Gun Assassin, The Grudge Father, Canon Fodder and Mambo. I
wouldn’t say any of them are lost classics, but I’d also say all of them are
exactly the sort of thing that belong in 2000 AD. You don’t need to have read
the first series to understand the follow-ups, and in some of these examples
the sequels were actually better.
 |
| All-new series that ran in the Prog when Tomlinson was in charge. |
What about Tomlinson
the writer? Armoured Gideon is surely
going to be the series he’s most remembered for. It’s sort of stuck between
being not quite good enough to justify a proper reprint, but maybe a bit too good
(and too long) for the Megazine floppies. Another digital bundle, perhaps?
 |
| Frank Weitz: not every character needs an arc. Art by Simon Jacob |
In the Grant Morrison
/ Peter Milligan vein, the series follows a slightly scummy, perennially
money-chasing protagonist Frank Weitz, grounded in a very well-defined London.*** Unlike those
two writers, Tomlinson sticks to his guns, keeping Weitz front and centre the
whole time, and keeping him, for the most part, in the same setting – meaning
we get to enjoy a bunch of London references.
Of course, the lasting
creation from the series is the giant robot, Gideon himself, who benefits from
a perfect design by artist Simon Jacob. At first a genuinely frightening
villain (well, I thought so), he soon becomes a comic hero, with his one-word
vocabulary and relentless pursuit of demons who try to invade the Earth.
Tomlinson even gets to play the Alan Grant game of ‘spot the literary
reference’, but having Gideon fight against his counterpart Jerubaal – the
honorific name given to Biblical hero Gideon from the book of Judges.
Jacob’s delightful
demons aside, the charm of the series overall comes mostly from the
sitcom-esque interplay of the human characters. Weitz banters with his
loved/hated editor Benson, and in the background, bored middle-aged suburban
nobodies dabble in demonology.
Book III tried hardest of all the be
crowd-pleasing by plundering 2000 AD’s back catalogue. Apart from getting
veteran art droid Mike White to draw an episode, the joke was stretched a bit
too thin.
 |
| Mike White's Frank Weitz. And yes, that's Bill Savage behind him. |
The banter, but not
the demonology, loom large in Tomlinson’s other big series, Mercy Heights.
The second Sci-Fi medical drama to appear in 2000 AD****, it arrived with a
strong cast of characters, fabulous Kevin Walker designs, and a soap opera
style interweaved with two really quite dense plots. That Tomlinson made it
work at all in 5-page chunks is impressive. I wonder if it’d have fit better in
the Megazine, where it could have used a more sprawling page-count?
I suspect the story
suffered from wanting to be a proper soap opera, with characters we can get to
know and love/hate, but also having to be a 2000 AD action story, meaning
characters have to die with a certain regularity, not to mention be exposed as
traitors/villains. It made sense that Tor Cyan ended up in a series on his own,
but I still miss Kintry, Lila and Administrator Sehetu, to name just a few of
the cast.
 |
| Gray's Anatomy in space. With killing. Art by Lee Sullivan (I think in both cases) |
In the end, Tor Cyan the series proved something of
a swan song for Tomlinson. Elevated by art from Kevin Walker trying out his
current style for the first time, and then by new find Jock, the series was
perhaps the epitome of Andy Diggle’s ‘rocket fuel’ memo. Take an existing idea,
pare it to the bone, and throw it onto the page. Somehow, Tomlinson’s
combination of plot mechanics, sombre mood and high sarcasm gelled perfectly to
make an exciting and thought-provoking little series. If it fell by the
wayside, it was because it was sort of Rogue
Trooper, but not the REAL Rogue
Trooper – who returned immediately afterwards with a full-on Nu-Earth
flashback.
 |
| Tor Cyan: grim n gritty n funny, too. Art by Kevin Walker |
 |
| The essence of a mad citizen Art by Karl Richardson |
Personal favourites:
Armoured Gideon: books 2, 3 and 4
Mercy Heights: Book I
Tor Cyan
More on John Tomlinson
A relatively recent interview
on the Forbidden Planet blog
 |
| Tomlinsonian bathos Art by Simon Jacob |
*He was the series
scripter; one feels inclined to lay the blame of ‘creation’ at the feet of
David Bishop, who may also have suggested the basic story (such as it was)
**I’m not clear on who
Tor Cyan was intended to be when he first appeared in Mercy Heights.
By the end of his solo series, it was revealed that…. (SPOILERS, obvs)
…he was a regened
clone of the original Rogue Trooper, made of the same genetic material and with the same combat experience /
sense of guilt, but none of the actual memories. Or maybe his memories were
wiped later. Or he just forgot them. Or something. It was sufficiently muddied
that I don’t think Tomlinson had a clear plan for Tor Cyan beyond ‘he’s a GI,
kinda like Rogue and Friday but not, alright. But definitely more Rogue than Friday.'
***The opening episode
places Frank Weitz in Brockwell
Park, a patch of green
just 5 minutes away from the house I grew up in, so I was always going to root
for the series!
****The first being Medivac 318. Apropos of these two series, if you
like SF hospital stories, I recommend the novels of James White.
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