Brief History

Barry Windsor-Smith was born in the United Kingdom. He was recruited by Marvel Comics for a test-period following work they saw from him in the UK. Although grateful for the opportunity, these were difficult times for him since he had to move to America with a visum and could only stay a limited time. Besides this, his rented apartment was not ready. This caused Barry to have to draw his first pages of Uncanny X-Men in a park and on a tight schedule. Due to the work-conditions, this was not Barry's best work but Marvel had faith in him and he was soon contracted to do many other projects for Marvel. He became famous for his work on Conan and the Uncanny X-Men at Marvel. Later, in the 1990's, Windsor-Smith made his mark in the Valiant universe drawing some key issues and all the covers for the first half of the Unity crossover. Windsor-Smith created the characters Archer and Armstrong for Valiant and wrote and drew the first half dozen issues. He co-created Rune with Chris Ulm for Malibu. His last major comic work in the 1990's was the oversized series Barry-Windsor Smith: Storyteller published by Dark Horse Comics, for which he created three serials, the Conanesque Freebooters, the SF Paradoxman, and the Young Gods. Smith wrote and drew all of the stories as well as working on the colouring and lettering. After a long gap, Monsters, a 365-page graphic novel he had originally conceived as a Hulk story in 1980's, was published by Fantagraphics in 2021.