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Write to Ron Smith

Started by longmanshort, 14 May, 2009, 08:26:41 PM

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Darren Stephens

Hello Mr Smith,
         My brother and I loved (and still love!) your artwork when we were kids. You brought to life so many great characters for us. Like many of my fellow boarders, you have proved an inspiration to us in our own artistic scribblings too!
Regards,
Darren.
https://www.dscomiccolours.com
                                       CLICK^^

Robin Low

Dear Ron

You were and indeed still are the definitive artist for Dredd and Mega-City One. Lord knows you've had some stiff competition, but you're still ahead even now. I wish other artists would pay as much attention to background detail and setting as you did. I hope retirement is being good to you.

Very best wishes

Robin

Woolly

Dear Ron

You were, and allways shall be, one of the best. I hope your life has been as rewarding for you as your artwork is for me!

All the best
Richard

Cactus

Uglies, simps, blobs, futsies, fatties, sky-surfers and kneepads. The citizens you drew are Mega-City One and every other artist just captures a reflection of that.

Thank you Ron.
I'm a tucker hot seat trucker and I'm voking cheerio, ten-ten!

Visc

Ron Smith was always my favourite artist from when I started reading 2000ad from about 1981.
The definitive Dredd artist and still the benchmark today. The incredible detail and atmosphere in every scene and location really brought the world to life for me. Centre-spreads by Ron were always spectacular and crammed with amazing designs, details and sense of scale. A legendary illustrator.

Thanks for all the great work sir.

flip-r mk2

Ron, to a young boy growing up you defined the population of the Big Meg. With so many memorable characters. Pug Ugly, Otto Sump,
Citizen Snork to name a few, I always  looked forward to your strips and what new strange and wonderful characters you were going to come up with next . I would like to give you my heartfelt thanks for all the wonderful memories you have given me. Here's hoping that we may get a new strip or even a star scan some time in the future.

all the best

filip roncone
It's all right, that's in every contract.
That's what they call a sanity clause.
You can't fool me, there ain't no sanity clause.

http://flip-r.deviantart.com/

http://forflipssake.blogspot.com

http://weeklythemedartblog.blogspot.com/


Time flies like an arrow, Fruit flies like a banana

Professor Bear

Others have covered all the relevant ground and left me with nothing to say beyond that you were my favorite Dredd artist growing up.  Away from Dredd, I can't think of a single strip you illustrated where the writing was more noteworthy or enjoyable than the artwork that graced it.
Thank you for fueling a young imagination and I hope you are enjoying your retirement, even if it does keep you from us.

longmanshort

Thanks for all the comments so far - do keep them coming. There's still a week left!

Cheers

mm
+++ implementing rigid format protocols +++ meander mode engaged +++

longmanshort

Hey, y'all - tis the last 24 hours for replies ...
+++ implementing rigid format protocols +++ meander mode engaged +++

Emperor

Thanks for the nudge.

It has pretty much all be said already, so I'll keep it simple: when I picture Dredd, Mega-City One and its deranged denizens in my mind's eye it is as depicted by Ron Smith.
if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Fractal Friction | Tumblr | Google+

Peter Wolf

You cant touch Ron Smith for top quality art and its pleasing to see so many others say the same thing as i have always said.

Your work is  permanently stored in my memory banks far more than any other JD artist i can think of and whats more i never get tired of looking at it which you never do with great Art.Your work is unsurpassed in my not very humble opinion.

Come back sometime and do the odd cover or do some commissions.I would pay good money for that just for the privilege.

You may have thought you were forgotten but its not the case.

Your work blew so many minds and left such an impression on myself and so many others.

Take care and i wish you all the best.

Peter.
Worthing Bazaar - A fete worse than death

SuperSurfer

Greatest respect for you and your fine work on many Dredd classics. In particular the stunning double page spreads of the Judge Child quest, Otto Sump, the Fatties. Has to be said that no one does the crazies, futsies etc of MC1 better. And your style perfectly suited the original and unsurpassed Dredd newspaper strips.

House of Usher

Yes indeed, I would like to add my name (David Knight!) to the list of fans whose imagination seized upon the images committed to paper by Ron Smith from 1979 onwards in the pages of 2000ad every week. I was 8 years old the first time I saw a Ron Smith Judge Dredd. As I recall, it was an episode of The day the Law Died - it must have been Prog 104; but the bits of Ron's The Day the Law Died episodes that really stuck in my memory were the the building of the wall around the city, the trains running on time, the odd little postal delivery robot in Prog 106, and Fergee's heroic sacrifice in Prog 108 - my first glimpse of the Statue of Judgement. All of the crazy futuristic stuff was filling up my head from then on - The Exo-men in Prog 111, Marjorie Blackshack of the Citizens' Committee for Compassion for Criminals, the enormous scale of the Charlton Heston Block in Prog 117, the hard-luck tale of Ralphy Bryce in Prog 121, the erruption of Power Tower and the rise and fall of Father Earth in Progs 124 and 125, the Crime Blitz and the Soviet sea invasion in Progs 128 and 129, and Sob Story, Johnny Teardrop, Otto Sump and the mo-pads in Progs 131 and 132...

Then there came Benji Doonan, the Invisible Man, the death of Judge Harkness, the spiders (Oh my God, the spiders!), alien seeds, the man who drank the blood of Satanus, lawmaster run amok, the demise of Bonnie Crickle, robo-doc run amok, the Ugly Craze, the Blob craze, the graffiti craze, Filmore Faro's garbage mine, the Galipardans on the war world in space, the Grunwalder, pirates of the Black Atlantic and all the rest !

I was fairly dazzled by the detail and the breadth of imagination and the excitement and sheer fun of those pages of Judge Dredd in my formative years, and Ron Smith was in at the start of the list of names of my childhood heroes alongside Ian Gibson, McMahon, Brian Bolland and the pseudonuyms John Howard and T.B. Grover!

Thanks, Ron, for all the hours of pleasure your wonderful story-telling has given me, and for bringing Wagner and Grant's marvellous scripts to life in a way that conveyed all the humour, fun, jeopardy and pathos they contained. It was a pleasure and a privilege to see it. When I was a kid you were one of the magicians whose names I knew who made the magic happen. Your work was food for the imagination in my formative years and remains fixed forever in my mind's eye.
STRIKE !!!

lborl

One of the best Dredd panels ever, to my mind:


Pete Wells

Hi Ron,

Just want to add my sincere admiration of your work and best wishes for your retirement. As so may have stated here, your work was absolutely inspirational and lifted already amazing scripts to dazzling heights! My earliest, and fondest, memories of Dredd are 'The Black Plague', 'Shanty Town', 'Citizen Snork' and, of course, Otto Sump. All of these are absolutely stunningly rendered with amazing amounts of humour, menace, emotion and skill in every page. How on earth did you make Otto Sump so grotesque and yet so lovable? Many have tried since and all have failed.

My other early Dredd memories are those phenomenal Daily Star Dredds. I used to run to my friends house every morning before school to read them (and have a sly peek at page 3 of course!) I'd say that despite all the mega epics and amazing Dredd graphic novels, my hardback Daily Star Dredd Mega Collection is possibly my most read Dredd book. It's also the book I loan to people if I want them to 'get' Dredd.

So, thank you sir, for all the love and hard work you so obviously poured into those pages. You are a huge part of the Dredd universe and, more importantly to me, a huge part of my childhood. I wish you nothing but happiness in your retirement.

Thanks again,

Pete.