Ron Turner (illustrator) - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Ron Turner became interested in science fiction at an early age, with numerous works across several media: the novels of H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Jules Verne; films and film serials such as Metropolis, Things to Come, and Flash Gordon; and Alex Raymond's comic strips. He developed a keen interest in American science-fiction pulp magazines, such as Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories (now known as Analog Science Fiction), and first started to develop his talent by attempting to copy the often spectacular cover illustrations.

In 1936, at the age of 14, Turner first got work as an apprentice in Odhams, a London art studio and publishing house. By 1938, Turner was providing illustrations for the British magazine Modern Wonder. In 1940, Turner's professional art career was interrupted by the Second World War, and he was drafted into the British Army. He returned to professional illustration in the late 1940s, finding a job drawing comic strips for Scion's Big series, which were mostly centred around the crew of the Atomic Mole: a subterranean craft, that explored the theoretical "habitable spaces" beneath the Earth's crust.

Odhams eventually began publishing a line of paperback fiction, for which Turner drew numerous covers, notably the Vargo Statten series by John Russell Fearn. Turner's art raised his profile to the extent that other publishers started to send him assignments. In 1953, Turner left Odhams to try his hand at freelancing and attempt to produce a regular comic strip in the style of British cartoonist Frank Hampson, whose work he admired.