Ron Smith, born 1924, is a retired British comic

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 artist whose career spanned almost almost fifty years, during which time he built a solid reputation as one of the most popular and well respected illustrators working in his field.

Primarily producing strips for the two main publishers, DC Thomson and IPC Magazines, Ron Smith is perhaps best known for drawing the hugely popular Judge Dredd

Judge Dredd

Judge Joseph Dredd is a comics character whose strip in the British science fiction anthology 2000 AD is the magazine's longest running . Dredd is an American law enforcement officer in a violent city of the future where uniformed Judges combine the powers of police, judge, jury and executioner...

 for 2000 ad and the Daily Star, a character with which he excelled in portraying the bizarre and crazy side of the inhabitants of Judge Dredd's future city, Mega City One.

Biography

After leaving the RAF, Ron Smith began his career in the industry working for GB Animation with other well known artists such as Mike Western

Mike Western

Mike Western was a British comics artist. He worked as a clean-up artist for GB Animation after military service in the Second World War, and later at Halas and Batchelor on their 1954 film adaptation of Animal Farm...

 and Eric Bradbury

Eric Bradbury

Eric Bradbury was a British comic artist who primarily worked for Amalgamated Press/IPC from the late 1940s to the 1990s....

. After early work such as Deed-a-day Danny in 1949, Smith moved on to Amalgamated Press (a forerunner of IPC) in 1950, initially filling in for other artists on humour strips before moving on to the adventure stories for which he was perhaps best suited, such as The Flame and the Arrow.

From 1952 until 1979, Ron Smith worked almost exclusively for the Dundee based publisher D.C. Thomson, producing art for its full range of publications, including the humour comics Topper

Topper

Topper may refer to:Objects:* A top hat* Harley-Davidson Topper, a motor scooter manufactured between 1960 and 1965* Camper shell, a small housing mounted atop the rear bed of a pickup truck* Topper , a class of sailing dinghyPeople:...

, Dandy

Dandy

A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self...

 and Beezer

Beezer

The Beezer was a British comic that ran from 21 January 1956 to 21 August 1993,...

, girls comics such as Bunty

Bunty

Bunty was a British comics anthology for girls published by D. C. Thomson & Co. from 1958 to 2001. It consisted of a collection of many small strips, typically the stories themselves being three to five pages long. As well as the weekly comic, Christmas and summer annuals were published. Bunty...

 and Judy

Judy

Judy may refer to:* Judy, Kentucky, village in Montgomery County* Judy , mascot on a Royal Navy vessel during World War II* Judy array, a complex data structure in computer science...

 and other titles such as Adventure and Victor. From the mid 1970s Smith was a regular contributor on the successful new boy’s war comic Warlord

Warlord

A warlord is a person with power who has both military and civil control over a subnational area due to armed forces loyal to the warlord and not to a central authority. The term can also mean one who espouses the ideal that war is necessary, and has the means and authority to engage in war...

, producing strips such as Drake of E-Boat Alley and the title strip, Codename Warlord. Around this time he also worked on the long running Hotspur

Hotspur (comics)

The Hotspur was a British boys' paper published by D. C. Thomson & Co. It was launched on 2 September 1933 as a story paper, the last of the 'Big Five'...

, drawing Nick Jolly, a fantasy story about an eighteenth century highwayman brought forward in time by well-meaning aliens to fight the sinister arch-villain Simon Death on his robotic, jet-powered horse Bess. Smith also drew other strips for Hotspur such as the sports story the Cowboy Cricketer and King Cobra, a character that featured on the cover of Hotspur almost continuously from 1977 to 1980, even after he had begun to work for 2000 ad

2000 AD

In 1979 Ron Smith began working for IPC Magazines, drawing Judge Dredd for 2000 ad. In its early years, the comic employed a mixture of well established artists along with a range of exciting new talent, and during the early to mid 1980s, Ron Smith was by far the most prolific artist working on the character. He is arguably the only artist to have successfully adapted to the comic's anarchic and iconoclastic style, while his contemporaries' efforts were gradually phased out as a newer generation took prominence.

Along with Brian Bolland

Brian Bolland

Brian Bolland is a British comics artist, known for his meticulous, detailed linework and eye-catching compositions. Best known in the UK as one of the definitive Judge Dredd artists for British comics anthology 2000 AD, he spearheaded the 'British Invasion' of the American comics industry, and in...

 and Mike McMahon

Mike McMahon (comics)

Michael McMahon is a British comics artist best known for his work on 2000 AD characters such as Judge Dredd, Sláine and ABC Warriors, and the mini-series The Last American....

 he contributed to two of the character's most popular epic-length stories, The Day the Law Died (AKA "Judge Cal

Judge Cal

Chief Judge Cal is a fictional character in the Judge Dredd comic strip in 2000 AD. He was loosely based on the real life Roman emperor Caligula, who is widely considered to have been insane...

" or "Judge Caligula

Caligula

Caligula , also known as Gaius, was Roman Emperor from 37 AD to 41 AD. Caligula was a member of the house of rulers conventionally known as the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Caligula's father Germanicus, the nephew and adopted son of Emperor Tiberius, was a very successful general and one of Rome's most...

") and The Judge Child

Judge Child

The Judge Child was an extended storyline in the 2000 AD comic strip Judge Dredd that ran from issues 156 to 181 in 1980. It introduced a character with the same name...

. When Bolland and McMahon moved on to new projects, other artists such as Carlos Ezquerra

Carlos Ezquerra

Carlos Sanchez Ezquerra , who has also worked under the alias L. John Silver, is a Spanish comics artist who works mainly in British comics and currently lives in Andorra...

, Ian Gibson

Ian Gibson (artist)

Ian Gibson is a British comic book artist, best known for his 1980s black-and-white work for 2000 AD, especially as the main artist on Robo-Hunter and The Ballad of Halo Jones, as well as his long run on Judge Dredd.-Biography:...

 and Steve Dillon

Steve Dillon

Steve Dillon is a British comic book artist, from Luton, Bedfordshire, best known for his work with writer Garth Ennis on Hellblazer, Preacher and The Punisher.-Biography:...

 took over illustrating duties alongside the ever-dependable Smith who now became the strips's definitive artist.

Amongst the more grotesque characters created by Smith was Otto Sump

Otto Sump

Otto Sump is a fictional character from the Judge Dredd comic strip in British comic 2000 AD.-Fictional character biography:Sump was a notoriously ugly man; so ugly that his parents abandoned him on the steps of a face-changing clinic. In later life, he was too ugly to be hired for any job other...

- Mega-City One's ugliest man, with Smith excelling himself in "The Otto Sump Ugly Clinic" depicting the horrific length citizens of the metropolis go to in making themselves look as physically repulsive as possible. Smith was responsible for the majority of ugly-spin-off stories including "Gunge", "Who Killed Pug Ugly?" about an ugly pop

Pop music

Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

 star and "The League of Fatties" about over-eaters gone to extremes (although the first Fatty story was actually drawn by McMahon in a previous Annual). The "Get Ugly!" 2000AD cover has been used at least twice as a T-Shirt design. Other Dredd stories which featured Smith at the peak of his powers were the Pat Mills

Pat Mills

Pat Mills, nicknamed 'the godfather of British comics', is a comics writer and editor who, along with John Wagner, revitalised British boys comics in the 1970s, and has remained a leading light in British comics ever since....

 scripted "Blood of Satanus" where he more than effectively depicted a man's transformation into a blood-thirsty Tyranosaurus Rex, "The Hot-Dog Run" featuring a group of cadet Judges on a training mission in the Cursed Earth

Cursed Earth

The Cursed Earth is a part of the fictional universe from the Judge Dredd series that appears in the UK comic book 2000 AD.-Background:...

 and "The Graveyard Shift", an extended narrative covering one typically crime-filled night in Mega-City One

Mega-City One

Mega-City One is a huge fictional city-state covering much of what is now the Eastern United States in the Judge Dredd comic book series. The exact boundaries of the city depend on which artist has drawn the story...

. Ron Smith also co-created the anti-hero Chopper

Chopper

Chopper may refer to:* Helicopter* AK-47 as used in street slang/rap lyrics. Prolific in New Orleans rap, where the city is known as "Chopper City"* Attacking Chopper, the table tennis style* Thompson submachine gun...

 in "Unamerican Graffiti" and Dave the orang-utan who became Mayor of Mega-City One.

Smith also created some of the most memorable 2000 ad cover images, and produced a number of other strips produced for the comic, including Mean Team, Harlem Heroes, Rogue Trooper and Chronos Carnival. Smith went on to draw for other IPC titles, including MASK, Eagle, Wildcat and Toxic Crusaders before retiring in the 1990s.

Daily Star

Ron Smith also helped bring Judge Dredd and his world to a whole new audience each weekend when he was chosen to illustrate a weekly Dredd strip for the Daily Star newspaper, each story a complete vignette offering a bizarre slice of life in the future city.

Artistic Style

Smith's depiction of Dredd differed slightly from that of his contemporaries. While both Bolland and McMahon chose to draw features of the Judge's uniform such as his gloves, boots, shoulder armour and elbow and knee pads in quite an exaggerated over-size fashion, Smith's depiction of Dredd's pads were more modestly sized and understated in appearance. The chunky heavy-looking chain attached to Dredd's zip and name-badge was replaced by a thinner, lightweight chain and the badge itself was less prominent. His helmet too was smaller and tighter-fitting. The overall effect was to focus more on Dredd's actual figure which was seen to be lean and muscular whereas other artists tended towards obscuring his figure by overstating the body-protection. Dredd's lawgiver pistol was also smaller and sleeker than it usually appeared, especially in Smith's earlier work where it rarely resembled its usual self! Most significantly Smith usually drew Dredd with two boot holsters and two lawgivers, while others gave him just the one.

Another trademark feature was that Smith often drew a prominent picture of Dredd (normally just head and shoulders) at the start of the week's story, quite separate from the narrative itself; although not a technique exclusive to Smith, it was fairly uncommon in 2000AD at the time.

Despite the undoubted quality of his artwork and his standing in illustrating some of the most popular and influential Dredd stories, Smith has never received the same recognition amongst fans as his contemporaries. When Titan Books first started reprinting 2000AD stories in the early 80s, the Judge Dredd stories it focused were those created by Brian Bolland and Mike McMahon, artists who have always ranked at the top of fans' lists of favourite illustrators, awarding the pair volumes of their own work. Smith's work, on the other hand, was only seen as part of the extended storylines to which he contributed. Even Rebellion's current reprints of Dredd's stories feature brief descriptions of Smith on the biography pages, whereas other artists whose contribution and influence is not as great receive detailed paragraphs.