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Is as per the town Slough between London and Reading or is it "sloff" as in rhymes with cough?

Presumably the former, given that they earn this name by 'sloughing' off their skins.

Well, I never knew that. 
Also, sorry Jim, but me and my brother as kids used to pronounce the 'Feg' as 'Fayg', giving it an Irish language twist it really, really doesn't have. And I still can't help pronouncing it like that in my mind.  I wouldn't mind, but the man's French, for feck's sake.

Why isn't anyone talking about Wellsy's piece?  It's up there with Buttonman's best! (It gave me a giggle, anyway.)

Jayzus wept.  That's not far off Bolland standard, that

 I seem to remember that stop-motion Nemesis figure being used in a video for some goth band I forget the name of in the 80s.  Can you help out here, Mr Campbell?

The work of his I get on with least (and this is all relative my not getting on with something of John Smith's is like me really liking someone else's work!) tends to be the stuff he does for other people's characters. his Dredd has had its moments but its amongst his weakest for me.

Not so sure about that.  Apart from a couple of niggles (letting that Karaoke killer car do the dirty work of killing gangsters; [spoiler]letting those[/spoiler] bungee thieves [spoiler]go scot-free[/spoiler]) I've found his Dredd to be pretty much spot-on; he was my favourite 'other' Dredd writer till Al Ewing came on the scene.  Also, I found his gallows-humour take on Robohunter to be far superior to the stuff Millar was doing on the character at the time (I know that's not saying much, but still...).
And Rogue Trooper... well, I've already mentioned that.  Cinnabar, despite all the crazy sci-fi elements, actually felt like a real war. (Or at least a realistic war film; I can't say I've ever experienced a real war.)  For the first time in Rogue history, the soldiers seemed human and the violence was shocking and sickening.

Where JS has really shone, though, is when he was given other writers' universes to play with, without necessarily including the usual main characters.  There was a lovely MC1 text story in a special called Animal House, and another Strontium Dogs one.

TB's right.  Though there were a few more one-off Downlode Tales prior to the boys' split, not featuring Sinister or Dexter at all.  Actually I'd like to see a few more of these; Downlode is an interesting place but Sin / Dex aren't always required.

It is today, man, cheers! I was just shocked at seeing my post from 10 years ago! 

Yep. Firekind, Leatherjack and Cradlegrave (all three titles use the Smith trick of stapling two words together to form a new word that your brain thinks it's heard before that pepper his eloquent scripts) are three of my all time favourite 2000 AD strips.

To be fair, sometimes your brain HAS heard them before.  I'm pretty sure there were leatherjacks in a previous John Smith strip (possibly a Devlin Waugh one?) and Lokkk'hs in more than one strip too.  Even character names are recycled:  There's a Hendrik Larsen in both Firekind and Cinnabar.

I'd forgotten about Firekind!  Pure brilliance, and better than Avatar, which is ripped off from  COINCIDENTALLY QUITE SIMILAR TO IT.   It was John Smith who pretty much single-handedly kept me buying 2000ad in an era of low-quality Ennis Dredds and stories about sheep police.

 
That's some serious necroposting right there. 
Thanks for the birthday wishes though! 
P.S. In case anyone's wondering, I never did that art I was threatening you with.  I realised after a lot of painful effort that I absolutely, definitely wasn't a comic illustrator.  So I became a mural painter instead.

He was a great Labour leader, and brews a nice bitter.

But back to our John Smith.

I often wonder why he wasn't snapped up by the yanks and elevated to Morrison-like levels of splendour.  The one thing I've ever seen him do for the Big 2* was a Hellblazer one-off, and it was brilliant and very scary, despite only being about John Constantine doing his washing down the laundrette.

Prog-wise, there are very few writers of his calibre.  A few of his achievements:

Devlin Waugh:  First openly gay lead character in the Tharg-verse, and an incredibly atmospheric story to go with him.

Killing Time:  Just excellent.

Cradlegrave:  One of 2000ad's best stories ever, in my humble opinion.  And the first piece of chav fiction I'd ever seen, beating Attack the Block by a year or so,

Cinnabar:  The best Rogue Trooper story every published. 

Most of his Dredds:  Very good.  Captures Dredd's nature perfectly.

The old Indigo Prime stuff like Fervent and Lobe:  Enjoyable and managed to fit some really, really filthy jokes into what was still essentially a kids' comic. 

Revere:  I liked it, anyway.  Nobody does disturbingly atmospheric like John Smith.  Also a great message for all the kids:  Chew glass and you can spit corrosive stomach acids like a boss!

While I'm absolutely baffled that Mark Millar is an international superstar and John Smith isn't, I'm not complaining.  I want him in the prog forever.

*And suddenly it dawns on me why Kenny Who's would-be publisher was called Big 1.

Has there ever been a prog-Dredd where the artist included a Justice Dept tattoo*?  Yesterday I re-read that Ron Smith one about Dredd at the shrink, and he had Justice Dept issue dog-tags round his neck.  Don't think that one was ever repeated.

*Apart from that female judge with the eagle either tattooed or shaved above her gowl

That truly is awesome - you've set a very high standard for this month's comp.  Cal's Arena! Why didn't John Wagner think of it? I love those ridiculously violent arena scenes in the Spartacus series.

Haven't seen it - but I will now! I wasn't too impressed by his glorification of that nasty little shit-heel Martin  'the General' Cahill, but I forgot he did Deliverance - and fucking ZARDOZ! - so fair play to him.

Just found this out on Facebook. Poor girl; and the poor family.  Bob always seemed like a really nice guy; hope he's managing ok.

Ah, I see.  I remember plenty of Deadline stuff from him of course; between him and the Hewlett lad they really defined the look of that comic (even though Steve Dillon and Brett Ewins were kind of the main men there).