EXTRACTS: The Art of Ron Embleton (illustrators special) © 2018 The Book Palace (144 PAGES in Full edition)

135 blazing forth, for the first time in full colour, on the front page of the new Express Weekly comic, with Wulf the Briton’ This was Ron’s first painted strip and it is this work that finally brought him widespread acclaim as one of the very finest strip artists in the country. His full page battle scenes, truly epic in their scope, once seen are never forgotten. When his long stint on Wulf came to an end in 1960, he continued producing colour strips for Express Weekly , first with the war strip, Battleground , and then with Biggles and finally with Colonel Pinto . When the comic folded in 1963, Ron moved to a new weekly, Boy’s World , where again he worked on a full-colour strip, Wrath of the Gods , scripted by Willie Patterson. When Boy’s World merged with Eagle , Ron drew a Napoleonic spy strip, Johnny Frog , in black and white wash, that ran from February to September 1964. LEFT: Wulf the Briton was Ron's first full colour comic strip and over the four years that he worked on it, he not only added much needed authority to the story but refined his painting technique in the process. FACING PAGE: Original art from 1959 when the strip was at its peak. LEFT AND BELOW: Ron's final page for the strip and his accompanying tongue-in-cheek self portrait. RIGHT: Ron’s epic story of the rivalry between Queen Cartamandua and her estranged husband, Venutius, for the command of the Iceni, dominated much of 1959's Wulf adventures.