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

138 covers, he also took over Don Lawrence’s fantasy strip, The Trigan Empire , for a while and created a ‘semi-strip’ documentary series returning once again to one of his favourite subjects, Rogers’ Rangers . In 1973, he began work on a picture strip that was to achieve an enormous following. Oh, Wicked Wanda was a completely new departure for him: a ‘sex and satire’ strip, painted in full colour and scripted by Frederick Mullally (and later by Ron himself) for the ‘adult’ magazine, Penthouse . It proved enormously successful and was later followed by a similar strip, Sweet Chastity , scripted by the Penthouse ’s editor, Bob Guccione. Ron was working on this strip at the time of his death in February 1988. It could be said that Ron Embleton graduated from a strip artist to become a much-respected illustrator of historical, social and military life, from the humble ‘Ron’ to ‘Ronald S. Embleton’. As a result his fan base was considerable, but for a generation of schoolboys who grew up in the 1950s it is as ‘Ron’ that he will be most fondly remembered. The artist of Wulf the Briton and Don o’ the Drums and countless other picture strips, taking young readers into an exciting world, which, though often painstakingly researched, remained the product of one man’s highly individual and vivid imagination. l