(Comics writer Tom Tully is perhaps best known today for his work on strips like Dan Dare for 2000AD, Johnny Red for Battle and an almost quarter century run on Roy Of The Rovers. The interview summarised below comes from several years before a few British weekly comics such as 2000AD started to aim, in part, at somewhat older readers than was the habit before.)
“Good taste is very important. There must be nothing that could be taken as obscene. You have to be very, very careful.”
In the Kid’s Stuff section of July 11th 1972’s Reading Evening Post, an interview with comics writer Tom Tully by Linton Mitchell appeared.
“From his top-floor workroom in a maisonette overlooking Prospect Park, Reading, Tom Tully writes about Mytek the Mighty (a giant robot), Johnny Cougar (an unbeatable Indian wrestler), The Wild Wonders (young football geniuses), The Steel Claw (a character with the power to become invisible) and countless other characters who are read avidly every week by millions of children (and adults) in Britain and 30 other countries”
Tully, who said he’d been in the comics business for 12 years, discussed the difficulty of writing for children – “say, eight to 14-year-olds” – despite managing to turn in 11 scripts a week. In his experience, British comics hadn’t fundamentally changed in 20 years. His rule was to produce fantasies with “an element of realism about the characters and the story”. His favourite character was the 15 year old “backstreet orphan” and footballer Nipper, who starred in Scorcher. He wrote his stories out in the form of frames, then typed up the result. He began writing around 10am, took time off at 1pm for TV and perhaps a drink, and then typed on until around 7, if not later. He earned £10 for a two-page script and £16 for a three sided one, the fees being negotiated one-to-one with editors. (That’s £120 and £190 in 2025’s money, meaning that Tully’s schedule, even if all filled up with 2-pagers, would have yielded him £1300 a week, or almost £67 500 a year. That would still be a considerable sum today. In 1972, it was, relatively speaking, a very good living indeed; the average annual income for a manual worker back then was less than £2000.) At some time in the future, Tully wanted to write “a really good (children’s) book”, but his comics scripting currently took up all his time.
Tully noted that two-and-a-half million kids regularly read comics in the UK, but wonders why more don’t: “I know I must be prejudiced but you don’t get cleaner, more wholesome reading everywhere.”
The Almanac Of The Fantastical 