Tom Tully was born in
Glasgow, but grew up in
Reading, Berkshire (where he became a supporter of
Newcastle United). He worked as a telephone operator for the
Royal Air Force as part of his national service. After a series of civil service jobs and earning a diploma in writing for children, he embarked on a freelance writing career. His first sale was at age 25 — a
Buck Rogers story.
From 1963 to 1970, Tully was the principal writer on The Steel Claw for Valiant with artist
Jesús Blasco, taking over for the fourth serial from
Ken Bulmer, and later returning from 1971 to 1973 for the sequel strip, Return of the Claw. In the early 1960s, he wrote Heros the Spartan with art by
Frank Bellamy for Eagle. Another one of his most notable strips for Valiant was The Wild Wonders, drawn by
Mike Western, about a pair of wild boys, brought up by animals, who turn out to be fantastic athletes. He also worked on Kelly's Eye and Janus Stark (both with
Francisco Solano López) in the 1960s.[2][a]
Tully wrote his first scripts for Roy of the Rovers in 1969, and wrote the comic sporadically until 1974 when he was given the permanent job as lead writer, a position he held for nearly 20 years. During that time, the strip moved from Tiger to its own
self-titled comic.
Tully wrote the Roy of the Rovers strip until the main comic's demise in 1993, with the final incident of Roy's playing career coming when he lost control of his helicopter and crashed into a field.[5] After the closure of Roy of the Rovers, Tully had very few comics credits. He retired to
Wiltshire in the
West Country.
^According to the first printing of Paul Scoones' The Comic Strip Companion (2012), Tully was also the regular writer on the Doctor Who strip in TV Comic prior to 1966; however, subsequent research suggests that Scones had confused Tully with another comics writer of this period,
Thomas Woodman.[3]