I almost put Barry Windsor-Smith on this list twice -- once under the former name and again under the simpler "Barry Smith". When Smith busted onto the scene with Marvel, I had been a fan and reader a matter of mere months and his high octane pencils were smashing to behold, if often impossible to decipher. The early work of the simply named "Barry Smith" glistened with enthusiasm for the comic book field and it was almost possible to see him improve with each comic, with each page, arguably with each panel. He improved so much that after a brief hiatus he returned under a new name "Barry Windsor-Smith" and that energy had been branded with some high-toned artistic influences from the classic age of illustration. It was the Marvel Bulllpen meets the Pre-Raphaelites and it was yummy. Smith made his bones on a little comic named Conan the Barbarian and by the end of this two tenures on the title, he was a bonafide superstar who joined forces with Berni Wrightson, Mike Kaluta, and Jeff Jones to fashion The Studio. They were the Beatles of comics, or maybe the Led Zepplin of comics, but they were all about high-minded artistic presentations and their influence has not yet ended. Nor has Smith, as he continues to work in the field. One of my favorite periods was when he partnered with Jim Shooter to design a new exceedingly Valiant universe. He got to do what his hero Kirby got to do, make worlds for others to play in, to recreate the Earth in his image. That's no small beans amigos.
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That issue of Daredevil is really wonderful. By modelling himself after Kirby and Steranko, BWS was inadvertently concentrating on design and especially storytelling in his early work, and brought that with him when he got into more elaborate illustrative comics. A lot of folks who followed him skipped that first step, and it makes a difference.
ReplyDeleteGreat point sir. I well remember seeing Smith's earliest stuff and saying I could do as well. I couldn't then, but later I was that good for the same reason, I was swiping from the masters mercilessly. Taking it to the next level of craft, bringing your sense of style is what makes the greats sing out.
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I actually thought that his very early stuff was quite awful, but he certainly improved over time - and not too long a time either. I wish he'd done without the affectation of adding 'Windsor' to his name though. We Brits were first exposed to his work in the '60s, on the back page pin-ups of two UK weeklies called, respectively, Fantastic and Terrific, all of which can be found on my blog.
ReplyDeleteI've seen those early posters he did before starting to work at Marvel proper.
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I found Barry's early work kind of off-putting, but it wasn't long before I became a great admirer of all his work. Colossal talent.
ReplyDeleteHis early stuff succeeds, if at all, because of the energy and enthusiasm which exudes from the pages. They are often incomprehensible have a purity of sorts.
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