By thirteen he had sold his first magazine article, an examination of body morphology in deep sea fishes, which included drawings by himself.

After graduating from high school, Smith chose not to attend university, and worked a variety of jobs from oilfield roughneck to computer operator.

This gave him the time to pursue climbing and motorcycle touring, combining the two into long trips to places like Yosemite, Black Canyon, and Joshua Tree.

In 1980 Smith attended a local science fiction convention and met Lela Dowling, a noted SF and fantasy artist.

The connections made by Smith at this convention would prove invaluable, and included Takeda and Okada of Gainax, Osamu Tezuka, Nozomi Ohmori, and Harumichi Aoki.

As Smith was the first foreigner to come to Japan with the intention of translating and selling manga in America, he was given many opportunities to meet with curious publishers and professionals, once again a tremendous stroke of luck that allowed him to quickly arrange for several licenses.

The rental agency for the small eight-unit apartment turned out to be run by the mistress of a yakuza member, which Smith found out only when several "heavies" came to collect the rent from a neighbor: Simon Binks of the band Australian Crawl, who had come to Japan to try to get his money from the company to whom he'd sent his classic guitar collection for sale (Binks has his own detailed account of the event on his Wikipedia entry, which includes information not known to Smith at the time).

Smith spent three months working as manager of the apartment in return for free rent, a convenient arrangement that unfortunately came to an end when the yakuza found out.

[3] In order to extend his visa beyond the normal limits, Smith was assisted by famous Japanese SF writer and translator Tetsu Yano, who wrote him a letter of recommendation.

[3] Yasuhiro Takeda of Gainax mentions Smith in his 2002 autobiography, The Notenki Memoirs:[4] Not too long after the move, we became acquainted with another otaku who had come from North America (Canada, actually).

When we received a visit from Hiroe Suga (who for a time was staying at a boarding house in Tokyo and working as an author), she was literally sickened by the smell.

In order to save money early on, many of these trips were made as a "courier" for companies that used a passenger's baggage allowance to inexpensively ship valuable documents and cargo.

[3] As profit-sharing money finally began to roll in, Smith's situation improved, and eventually he rented an apartment in San Francisco with comic artist Adam Warren and later purchased a house there.

He also co-wrote the first three American Dirty Pair comics with Adam Warren, and the short series Terminator: Hunters and Killers for Dark Horse.