Early career A lifelong resident of West Virginia, Smith is a graduate of
Marshall University in journalism. Smith got his start in the comics field as a
letterhack, having written over 400
letters to various comics, and actually was solicited to send letters based on early preview copies. Smith's first professional comics writing job was with
Pacific Comics, but the company went out of business prior to publishing the story.
Eclipse Comics Beau Smith's first published work was for
Eclipse Comics in 1985, a series of one- to two-page backup features in the
Scout comic (created by fellow West Virginia native
Timothy Truman). This was followed by a collaboration titled "The Dogs of Danger" with
Flint Henry in the title
The Swords of Texas. The next feature for Eclipse was a character called
Beau LaDuke, the character bearing a striking resemblance to Beau Smith himself. The Beau LaDuke character had a backup feature in
Scout: War Shaman #13-#16. Smith's next work was a collaboration with
Chuck Dixon on a revival of The Black Terror in a crime noir tale. This is the first of many collaborations with Chuck Dixon, who would partner with Smith to write stories for DC Comics in the future.
DC Comics Smith's first published work for DC was in
Green Lantern Quarterly #8. Smith's first full length story for DC was
Guy Gardner: Warrior #20, which was the conclusion of the "Emerald Fallout" story, a follow-up to the "
Emerald Twilight" storyline which removed
Hal Jordan from the role of
Green Lantern. Smith had the challenge of developing a new direction for
Guy Gardner not including the use of a power ring, part of his mythos from the creation of the character: Smith was editorially mandated to give morphing powers to Guy Gardner. The writer had very specific limits for the powers in mind, in the writer's own words "Saddled with this morphin' stuff I made it that Guy could only morph the weapons of the greatest warriors of the universe. I figured that would narrow it down to spears, knives, swords, guns... and so on."
Cobb: Off the Leash was also reprinted in a magazine format collected edition in 2007. In February 2008, IDW released the Smith-penned original story set in the
24 mythology entitled
24: Cold Warriors.
Other work Smith has maintained a regular opinion column at
Comics Bulletin titled "Busted Knuckles". Features of the column include the "Busted Knuckles Babe of the Week" and the "Manly Comic Cover" of the week, the latter of which is the subject of a good-natured rivalry for the manliest cover with
Chuck Dixon's website www.Dixonverse.net. Smith has also maintained a long term How-To column about the comic business in
Sketch Magazine, entitled "From the Ranch". Those columns were collected in 2007 for a book entitled ''Beau Smith's No Guts, No Glory: How To Market Yourself In Comics
. Smith has also written business columns for Westfield Comics, Entertainment Retailer
, Wizard, Comic Book Business
, Comics & Games Retailer
, and The Comics Buyer's Guide''. Smith ventured into writing video games for such titles as
Maximo: Beauty Is Only Sword Deep from Dreamwave Studios, and
Maximo vs. Army of Zin from Capcom Video Games. ==Bibliography==