Following Embleton's death at age 57, his obituary in The Times described him as "responsible for some of the finest full-colour adventure series in modern British comics ... a grandmaster of his art.
"[1] David Ashford and Norman Wright, writing in Book and Magazine Collector (March 2002), note that "his work for such diverse periodicals as Express Weekly, TV Century 21, Princess, Boys' World, and Look and Learn have earned him the respect of every practitioner in the field and the gratitude of all of us who admire the art of the comic strip.
He trained at the South East Essex Technical College and School of Art, where his tutors included David Bomberg, who would prove a great influence on Embleton's subsequent work as a painter of both figures and landscapes.
"Ron" was beginning to establish himself when Embleton turned 18 and was called up for his National Service, during which time he served in south-east Asia during the Malayan Emergency.
His fascination with historical characters and settings served him well with later strips, Wrath of the Gods (Boys' World, 1963) and 'Johnny Frog' (Eagle, 1964), although Embleton was equally at home with contemporary adventure strips (Biggles, TV Express, 1960) and science fiction: his artwork for Stingray in TV Century 21 led to the show's creator, Gerry Anderson, inviting Embleton to provide artwork to grace the closing credits of his new show, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.
As well as The Times, obituaries appeared in a number of other national newspapers, including The Daily Telegraph and The Independent, the latter noting that whilst Embleton was "internationally famous"' for his Penthouse comic strip, "he was also a fine illustrator whose penchant for historical accuracy and detail went beyond mere craft".
[4] In The Guardian he was lauded as "a comic strip artist of extraordinary energy and versatility, so wide-ranging in what he did that he might seem on the face of it to have straddled the void —or pit — which [George] Orwell saw gaping between the "gentle" English tales and the sadomasochistic "Yank mags" in the famous essay on Boys' Weeklies.