Barry Windsor-Smith
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Barry Windsor-Smith (formerly known as Barry Smith) born 1949 in Forest Gate London is a British cartoonist and comics-author and painter best known for his work in American comic books.
In 1968 Windsor-Smith travelled to New York and presented himself at the offices of Marvel Comics. A suitably impressed Roy Thomas gave him the job of drawing an issue of X-Men, but with no studio and having been kicked out of his hotel, Windsor-Smith was forced to do the work sitting on park benches. The resulting pages secured Windsor-Smith further work with Marvel, even though he was sent back to England within the year as he had no work permit. Windsor-Smith rose to prominence in the early 1970s as the artist for Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. Along with writer Roy Thomas, Windsor-Smith crafted adaptations of Howard's short stories "The Frost-Giant's Daughter", "Tower of the Elephant", "Rogues in the House" and "Red Nails", as well as new stories. One of the final Conan stories Windsor-Smith produced with Thomas featured the creation of the warrior woman Red Sonja. Shortly thereafter, Windsor-Smith left comics to pursue a career in fine art, although he has returned to the comics field several times since then. Now granted residential status in the United States, Windsor-Smith set up Gorblimey Press in 1974 through which he released limited editions prints of fantasy based subjects that proved popular.
When Windsor-Smith returned to Marvel in the 1980s, he gained new fame as the artist of a Machine Man limited series and writer and artist of "Weapon X" for the title Marvel Comics Presents. This was Windsor-Smith's own, original conception of the origin of the X-Men character Wolverine.
In the 1990s, Windsor-Smith created the series Barry Windsor-Smith: STORYTELLER, which contained three ongoing serials, "The Paradoxman," "Young GODS," and "The Freebooters." The series was cancelled after fewer than a dozen issues, and Fantagraphics Books is currently issuing hardcover collections of each of the serials along with supplemental features, essays and previously-unseen art. "Young GODS and Friends" was the first of the collections published, and "The Freebooters" is expected to be released in Summer, 2005, followed in 2006 by the final volume, "The Paradoxman."
Fantagraphics has also published Windsor-Smith's "Adastra in Africa," a hardcover featuring one of the characters from "Young GODS," in a story that was originally intended to be "LIFEDEATH III" of Marvel's "Uncanny X-Men" featuring the character Storm. In addition, Fantagraphics is the publisher of Windsor-Smith's series of hardcover art books called OPUS. To date, two volumes have been released, featuring lavish reproductions of Windsor-Smith's art, as well as his ongoing autobiographical story "Time Rise," in which Windsor-Smith discusses at length extraordinary experiences that have long been a part of his life and informed his art. More volumes of OPUS are expected in the future, as is a long-awaited project called "MONSTERS."
Barry Windsor-Smith Online (http://www.barrywindsor-smith.com)