“Tom Frame has worked on more 2000 AD
stories than any other creator with his first work published in Prog 4. He will
be sorely missed.”

I don’t have the hard data to confirm or
deny the first sentence, and because of the second I wouldn’t want to. Suffice it
to say that Frame lettered at least
one strip in most Progs from number 4 to number 1488, working into his final
days. And this is not to mention every special, spin-off comic, annual, and
(again, likely) most issues of the Megazine up to issue 246. That’s as solid a
work rate as anyone could have mustered, and puts him up there with Wagner in
terms of individual contributions across the whole Thargian print empire. It might even push his total higher.

On
Tom

For me, and I expect most readers, Frame’s
style is indelibly linked to Judge Dredd, the strip he made his own (as
letterer) for nigh on 30 years. I suspect he has supplied more episodes in a
row than Mr Wagner himself, helping the strip look good even when the writer of
the day perhaps wasn’t supplying top-end material to work with…

Comics fans come to recognize an artist’s
style relatively easily; recognizing a letterer is the realm of the uber-fan. But
Tom Frame was an exception – one of the few letterers whose work casual 2000 AD
fans could, I believe, pick out at a glance – and not because it looked weird,
because it looked right. I can think
of no greater compliment to his immaculate style than that Peter Milligan &
Brendan McCarthy, as idiosyncratic a pair of creators who ever worked in the
medium, picked Frame to letter their psychedelic weird-fest Rogan Gosh in the pages of Revolver.. (I
suppose it may have been editor Peter Hogan’s choice; either way, the fit is a
solid one.)

I’ve done a smattering of comic-book
lettering in my working life, and it’s a thankless task. I did it all on
computer using pre-existing fonts (hello, Blambot!) and using programs such as
Illustrator and InDesign to construct the balloons, which takes out a certain
amount of the art that must have been Frame’s bread and butter for many years –
most especially in the physical drawing of the letters themselves. Whatever his
trade secrets, no one’s ever had a bad word to say about the man or his work.

I've recently learned (thanks to Jim Campbell for the tip!) that Frame was also responsible for the colouring on covers, the centre pages and various back-page star scans of most of the first 580 Progs or so, adding a huge number to his 'appearances' total. Lately the coloured centre-pages have started appearing in reprint collections so new readers can enjoy the thrill of that small burst of colour that often elivened a Judge Dredd episode (and occasionally othre strips). Another technical skill lost to the digital era.

Here's a badly photographed sample page:

Letters and colours by Tom Frame
Taken from 'The Taxidermist' collection
(Casual reference to 'Amadeus' by Wagner, Grant and Kennedy)

We’re here to salute the mighty Mr
Frame.

Heroes
of 2000AD No. 2½

Tharg’s
lettering droids

Lack of easily accessible data* makes it
hard to attempt to calculate how many appearances Tharg’s surprisingly small
team of letter droids has put in, let alone to rank them in between other
creators. As best as I can figure it, the 8 droids listed below, by far the
most prodigious of their breed, have all provided well over 300 Progs-worth of
damn fine reading, comfortably putting them all in the top 20 ‘most
contributions’ list.

Raise your hats and glasses again to these dedicated
few, who have put in, one suspects, more hours per day, on a daily basis, than
almost any creator droid.

Annie
Parkhouse – taking the baton of Dredd, and with a
Stakhanovite work ethic, to boot. (By my count, she’s likely to outstrip Mr
Frame before Prog 2000 – the next one – rolls around)

Simon
Bowland – the new kid who has racked up well over
100 Progs/Megs since making his mark in Prog 1498.

Gordon
Robson – the resize king of Fleetway, but also a
stalwart letterer from 1985-1998. -check out his blog!

Tharg’s go-to droids from the IPC /
newsprint-era of 2000AD (Progs 1-519) shared duties across all manner of strips,
and defined a key part of 2000AD’s appeal. Heroes every one, whose total
contributions remain uncountable, I’m afraid:

Bill Nuttal

Peter Knight

John Aldridge

Tony Jacob

Jack ‘father of Steve’ Potter

Heroes
of 2000AD No. 2¾: Jan Shepheard

Let’s also pause here to remember and
celebrate Jan Shepheard, designer, art bodger and general miracle-worker for
Fleetway publications. She is, in the world of 2000AD, most celebrated for
creating the original Judge Dredd logo

Spot the hidden Judge's face!

– not
to mention Strontium Dog

Can you think of a better way to represent both space travel and radioactivity?

and a host
of others. As such, it’s hard to quantify, in a fair way, how many progs her
work has appeared in, but it’s safe to say that her impact on our enjoyment of
the comic is a lot.

*The fine folk who have input reams of data
into Barney (without whom I wouldn’t be able to run this countdown) have done
amazing work, but if there is anything missing, it’s consistent details on
lettering work, especially for the older Progs. A task for a dedicated squaxx
recovering from a long-term but not-too-debilitating illness, perhaps.