web hosting short URLs photo sharing

Windsor-Smith and Perfectionism

Those who look back at the comings and goings of talent and at the occasional point of brilliance in the comics published between 1962 and 1972 both by DC and by the then-young Marvel may have noticed that, during those years, Marvel Comics managed to employ, burn out, drive off, or tragically lose more talent than any one company should ever need. This period saw the rise of Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Sal Buscema, Gil Kane, Marie Severin, Steve Ditko, John Romita Sr., Jim Steranko, Herb Trimpe, Neal Adams, and other worthies whose illumination has grown faint with the passing of almost thirty years.

One name that took the industry by surprise was that of comics veteran Barry Smith, who, since the seventies, has used the name Barry Windsor-Smith. Unlike many of his peers, Barry still works in the industry; you can view samples of various periods of his work at his personal web site at http://www.barrywindsor-smith.com.

His first Marvel work, while demonstrating a talent for composition and framing, nonetheless suffered from unnecessary ugliness. Smith attempted to integrate a Kirby-like feel into early forays into titles like The Avengers, X-Men, and Daredevil, and created works underappreciated for their uniqueness. This early style reflected the hint of sinister psychedelia brought out to great effect by Jim Steranko and which appeared as a dark taint in the better early Trimpe Hulk work.

This style, however, did not endure much past 1968, and the mature Smith style, which would earn him much acclaim, came in works like Dr. Strange and Conan.

His Own Touch

Abandoning an unnecessary baggage of imitation Kirby elements into an older style that still appears in tributes and imitations (such as some issues of Cable in 1997 or 1998), Smith replaced his derivative elements with a unique aesthetic that did not resemble anyone else's work. His Doctor Strange and Avengers #100 demonstrated the maturity of the style he would use to push the frontiers of the medium when he, with Roy Thomas, would receive the opportunity to interpret Robert E. Howard's Conan for comics.

Conan #1 sold for 15 or 20 cents new and hit the hundred-dollar mark sometime in the 1980s (going book price). Smith had much to do with this demand, which extended through his run but failed to carry into the seemingly endless John Buscema period of the title. Nor, I think, will fashion cause this price to fall as people forget Barry Smith, since the work he did on the title speaks for itself and would incline a new collector to investigate other work he might have done during this period.

One may consider, ironically, that comics companies that barely sell 25,000 of popular titles these days ignore the possibilities of quality reprint magazines; a special edition of the original Conan run under Smith's pencil might move considerably more than this modern figure that barely straddles the break-even cost for print and distribution setup.

If Conan has become a recognizable name, credit the efforts of Marvel Comics in those days. Some pulp enthusiasts, writers, and professional fans paid enough attention to Howard's work to keep the Conan stories just barely in print. The character became a popular phenomenon, though, through comics exposure that ultimately led to two bad movies, a mediocre cartoon, and renewed editorial interest by publishers in printing the original stories and new stories by current authors.

Smith, however, only worked a short span on the early title. He put so much into his highly-detailed and stunning work, pushing himself to exceed previous achievement, that he set a pace and a standard a sane man would not maintain. He melded realism, superheroic dynamism, and his unique feel for the fantastic into a run of such excellence that those of us who remember his untimely departure from the title, and from subsequent years and years of comics, have to shake our heads sadly like Arthur recalling Camelot.

Smith, by doing well, had not done good, for it took many years to see his return to comics, where eventually he would introduce another style for works like Archer and Armstrong for the defunct Valiant comics. Smith's work had since become considerably less like Silver-Age Marvel material and reflected influences from European artists like Moebius, towards whom other industry greats seem inclined to converge (specimens of recent George Perez and Gil Kane suggest a Moebiusward convergence; Windsor-Smith's work suggests certain older Moebius elements).

However, as it has for around 30 years, Barry Windsor-Smith's work sells itself not with its derivative content (with which he can dispense at a whim), but with those idiosyncratic elements that bring a new face to derivative material or stand strongly on their own as unique flourishes defining the work of a talent that refuses to sink to the standard of the medium.