I may get shot for this...

[Smith]

The Daily Dredd collection would be an ideal purchase for those unfamiliar with his craftsmanship.

Remember how he condensed the full Apocalypse War tale into less than a dozen panels, and it was still a thrilling read?

[IndigoPrime]

The quotes may or may not have been lifted from a lengthier interview which I never read

Whatever the case, it would have been extracted from a longer recorded interview done by the writer, and all such comments are therefore somewhat out of context, even when framed within the narrative the writer is putting forward. This is something I've always found tricky myself – you get 5,000 words of top-notch interview and have a word count of a fifth of that. Nuance gets cut. Things get removed. Everything is condensed.

As noted, I suspect the comments were about the reality of the craft – the speed in which people have to work to get by – and balancing quality with the time available. I don't think there's any indication from Smith's work that he abandoned pages half-done – more that he was able to optimise his time carefully to create the best job within the time available.

[Smith]

Something went wrong,so my previous response didnt show up.Anyway,long story short,Daily Dredds are pretty good.

[O Lucky Stevie!]

I don't know why I wrote CQ instead of CE, I did have a few glasses of wine last night so that might explain the error. My apologies, no disrespect intended. Thing is, I love the original Strontium dog run, and that's all Carlos Ezquerra,

Stevie can kindof grok where you are coming from, Marko.

Not being a huge Dredd fan at the time* this squaxx resented The Apocalypse War** for keeping Strontium Dog out of the prog.

Oh sweet folly of youth!


*Despite reading Tooth since Prog 6, it wasn't until Beyond The Wall in the 1986 Sci F Special that Stevie finally got this ludicrously dressed cop with the silly name.

**aka the second greatest war comic of all time.

[JayzusB.Christ]

My subjective impression (whether true or not) at the time of being exposed to his work was that Smith seemed perhaps some years older than many of the other Dredd artists, and that his work appeared to me to be somewhat less 'contemporary' for the times by comparison. Purely a subjective opinion. Surely I'm allowed that.

Of course you're allowed to have an opinion.  It's only about a comic art style; it's not like you're advocating genocide.  I just disagree with you about the methods - personally I wish I was skilled enough to be able to work to the kind of deadlines Ron used to set himself.

[JudgeJudi]

Why in the world Smith should choose to focus on the time demands of the work as opposed to any other aspect (that presumably his fans would be more interested in focusing on) baffled me. He's making a distinct choice to not discuss the artistic aspects of his work, but purely the timeclock-punching involved from his perspective. It just seemed like a strange response to an interviewer with curiosity regarding the work under consideration, to be preserved for the edification of the magazine's history.

This is no different from many of the marvel and DC creators of the same generation - being a commercial artist is a job and you treat it like a job. Although he's a rather unpopular figure, his attitude is no different to that of say John Byrne.

[SIP]

I think I need to stay away from this thread for the sake of my blood pressure. Artistic preference and subjectivity I understand, but the comments that aren't based on simple taste alone are really irritating me.

Deep breaths......

[SIP]

It just seemed like a strange response to an interviewer with curiosity regarding the work under consideration, to be preserved for the edification of the magazine's history.

But it's an honest and entirely understandable response. I can only imagine Ron wasn't earning a ton of money from his comic work. To make a living he would have needed to maintain a level of output. You would need another wage or some form of financial security to be able to afford to spend as long as you liked on a page.

The thing is, his pages are flawless......I bet most artists wish they could produce work of that quality AND maintain a deadline.

Are we to expect a comic artist to live in poverty so that he can spend as long on a page as perfection takes for the glory of the comic and it's readers? Or can the man be allowed to earn an adequate living and also hopefully spend some time with his family too?

[positronic]

I couldn't say what passes for shop talk among comic artists, but you'd think they'd spare the fans (who else is going to be reading Thrill-Power Overload?) the brass tacks of boiling "the art of comics" down to a fine accounting of X#-pounds per hour. I've read plenty of interviews, and I've heard artists gripe about pay rates, deadlines, etc. Not all of them were happy with the jobs they got assigned or the characters or genres they were drawing, and some of them hated editors with a burning passion, but they carried on, because they were being paid for what they loved doing.

I didn't get any sense of that at all from Smith's comments.  I get the sense that Smith had no special attachment to the work itself. It was almost as if the breakdown of accounting would have had him painting signs, if it turned out he could have gotten a better hourly rate for it. It just really offended me -- not that he can't do whatever he likes, but is that the kind of thing comic fans really want to read in an artist's interview? ... 'I'm only in it for the money' ? If that's the way you really feel, have the decency to keep it to yourself.

[JayzusB.Christ]

I remember a John Wagner interview years ago where he said that if he had the money to retire, 'comics would not see me for dust, man.'  I'm glad he, and Ron, needed the money.

[Steve Green]

I'm with Ron Smith block.

[Bolt-01]

... 'I'm only in it for the money' ? If that's the way you really feel, have the decency to keep it to yourself.

I think you may well be in a minority with that opinion.

[Bad City Blue]

I love Ron Smith's Dredd, he always gave it a fun factor other artists couldn't. He and Carlos are chalk and cheese style wise, but Carlos IS king and I turned into a total fanboy at the 40th con - didn't happen with anyone else.

I find when I try to write 200AD scripts in my mind is a particular artists style when I visualize what I want to see from the artist (even though they tend to improve on my ideas). When I was writing some Dredd recently I kept imagining Ron Smith art, with one Steve Dillon.

Carlos has his own style, like any great comic artist should, and he's kept that style constant for over 40 years now. A master storyteller and a great man.

Nuff said

[Magnetica]

Fans eh? What are they like?

It's not enough for our idols to create the TV shows, the films, the books or the comics we love or to play for the team we love, or play the sport we love, they have to love them as well (?).

Well sorry reality check - the fans by definition do love whatever it is they are a fan of. The creators or players don't necessarily. By definition it is a job for those doing it professionally. Loving it is an optional extra. Some love it, some don't.

A few examples all by their own admission: Andre Agassi hated tennis, Patrick Stewart thought Star Trek was a load of old nonsense, Carrie Fisher and Harrision Ford thought Star Wars was silly when filming the original film. Most Premier League footballers aren't fans of the team they play for and a lot would go elsewhere if they could get more money and / or a better chance of winning a trophy.

Nothing wrong with any of that in my book. We care but have no right to expect them to. Do their best effort yes, but be a fan as well...it's too much to ask for.

Coming back to Ron Smith, I don't see anything that has been posted in this thread so far that says he didn't love comics ( it's actually not clear either way) just that he adopted a certain method to make sure he got his head down and produced the work he was being paid for.

Nothing wrong with that either.

[Jim_Campbell]

If that's the way you really feel, have the decency to keep it to yourself.

What? Like your ridiculous opinion here, perhaps?

There was a long and hugely entertaining interview with Smith in the Megazine a while back that in no way suggested disdain for the material and part of being a professional artist is delivering the work on time. If you know when the work is due and how many pages the job is, then you know how many hours you can spend on a page if you want to deliver. You also need to assign a sensible cash value to your time in order to not starve.

As others have noted, Smith's pages never looked half-finished, so I don't believe that he literally downed tools on a page the second the allotted time was up, but rather that he was simply expressing the essential advice of "finished, not perfect" in slightly different terms.

Look: I work to a timer. I know how much work I need to do to make a living, and I know how long I want to spend on a book without having to pull all-nighters and sacrifice my quality of life. Let's call it twenty minutes (not including prep time, which is a separate process) per page.

Does that mean that I rush a page to get it done in twenty minutes? No. Does it mean that mean I stop work when I hit twenty minutes? No. What the timer does mean is that I'm conscious of how much time I'm spending on the work. If a page takes thirty minutes, that's what it takes, but the timer makes me conscious that I'm now off-schedule so, when I then get a DPS with one narrative caption and a sound effect that only takes ten minutes, rather than thinking 'Easy!' and faffing about on Facebook for a few minutes, I think 'Great, back on track!' and get on with the next page.

It's called being a professional.