Beau Smith (born December 17, 1954 in Huntington, West Virginia) is an American comic book writer and columnist, best known for his work for DC Comics, Image Comics, IDW Publishing and as vice president of marketing for Eclipse Comics. Career 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, which was a follow-up to the "Emerald Twilight" storyline that had removed Hal Jordan from the role of Green Lantern. Smith had the challenge of developing a new direction for Guy Gardner that did not include the use of a power ring that had been 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 soon." These limits were not