Ian Gibson, 1946-2023

Sadly, we have to note the loss of another of the greats of 2000 AD. Ian Gibson died at the beginning of last month, but we didn’t want his passing to go without notice.

Ian Gibson was there right at the beginning of 2000 AD, first appearing in issue #14 in 1977. Like his contemporaries, he had, of course, been working for British comics for some years before this. He was one of the regular artists for Judge Dredd, and John Wagner created Sam Slade, Robo-Hunter specifically as a showcase for Gibson’s talents. Like his fellow 2000 artists, Mick McMahon and Kevin O’Neill, Gibson developed a highly-cartoonish style, rather than the ‘realism’ so prevalent in US comics of the time. You couldn’t really mistake a Gibson page for anyone else’s. This helped mark out 2000 AD as something different.

In the early 1980s, Gibson suggested to Alan Moore, then entering his phase of comics megastardom, that he write a girls’ story for 2000AD. The result was The Ballad of Halo Jones, the comic for which Gibson is probably best remembered. It was a marked contrast with much of 2000AD’s content, being moderately paced, subtle, and developing its world slowly. It also demonstrated that, for all the exaggeration Gibson often put into his portraits, he could depict people as beautiful as you’ll find in any comics. Sadly, a copyright dispute between Moore and IPC meant that only three of the planned nine books ever appeared. Gibson remained keen to return to the character someday, but Moore moved on.

Unlike some of his fellows, Gibson never made a big name for himself in the US, though he did work for American comics at times, perhaps most notably on Steed and Mrs Peel (the comic that would have been called The Avengers had some Johnny-come-lately US company not pounced on the rights to the name). Most recently, in 2023 he released the first volume of Lifeboat, a space opera both drawn and written  by Gibson.