.
I've been back into Smith's work lately, particularly his earliest stuff.
In the pre-internet days, those early issues were hard to find, or even to checklist, so I gained a lot of pleasure in finding it.
I was surprised how little of it there is in this checklist, only 139 titles over Smith's 50-plus year career:
Barry Windsor-Smith checklist http://www.mikesamazingworld.com/mikes/features/creator.php?creatorid=111I have a complete collection of his
CONAN THE BARBARIAN 1-24 And
SAVAGE TALES 1-3, "The Frost Giant's Daugter" (1), and "Red Nails" (2 and 3).
And SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN
3, "Kull of Atlantis",
And
16-17, Bran Mak Morn "Worms of the Earth" runs,
And his
AVENGERS 66-67, and 98-100 stories in original or reprint runs.
When tracking down Smith's other earliest stories and anthology work with this checklist, such as TOWER OF SHADOWS
3,
5, and
7,
CHAMBER OF DARKNESS
3 and
4,
ASTONISHING TALES 3-6 and 10, and
MONSTERS ON THE PROWL 9, I was pleasantly surprised that I already had about 75% of it already in my collection, so I didn't even have to find or buy them.
Smith initially worked from 1969-1976 in comics (the latter sparse 1974-1976 stories mostly inventory or delayed-published earlier work), some of it he abandoned working on (several of his later CONAN THE BARBARIAN issues, I think 21 and 23, and SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN 16-17) that was finished by other artists.
In 1980-1981 when I first discovered his work, I was a little resistant to Windsor-Smith in the beginning, because I perceived him to be an elitist snob who thought he was too good to do comics (see the
Smith interview in EPIC ILLUSTRATED 7). But the work is good, regardless of what Smith is like (or isn't like) personally.
A shop owner I've known for about 35 years now, who has been going to comics conventions all over the country since the 1960's, who was friends with Len Wein since they were both in high school, and met most of these 1970's writers and artists from the time they started out professionally in comics, said Howard Chaykin used to be a real jerk in the 1970's, and he actually watched at a convention one comics fan Chaykin insulted get angry at Chaykin and throw him around a bit for his arrogance. And as this dealer said,
no one made a move to intervene on Chaykin's behalf, such was their dislike for him at the time.
But he said seeing Chaykin over many decades at conventions nationwide, Chaykin matured and mellowed over the years .
And my own experience meeting Chaykin at Miamicon in 2012 is that he was very approachable, funny, and a great guy to hang out with. There's also the possibility that most of these artists are almost always great people, but you can just catch them on a bad day.
So maybe Windsor-Smith was even back then more down to earth than he might seem. Who knows.
But regardless, his comics work, and especially his Gorblimey Press work, was beautiful. And has aged well and remains classic work.
After about a 7-year hiatus away from comics (except for a few articles and interviews displaying his Gorbimey Press prints and portfolios), Smith began doing comics work again in 1983, with
EPIC ILLUSTRATED 16,
MARVEL FANFARE 15,
MACHINE MAN MINISERIES 1-4, a few roughly annual issues of
X-MEN, in 186, 198, 205, 214, in
DAREDEVIL 236 and IRON MAN
232 and
243 ,re-visiting titles where he initially did a few scattered fill-in issues of his earliest work.
And there's certainly a huge schism between Smith's earlier work and his post-1983 work.
There are times when I'm not as into his later work. And at other times I see it as, while different from his earlier work, has a complexity and attention to detail that makes it arguably as good in its way as his best known earlier work.
The fourth of July story in DAREDEVIL 236, his MACHINE MAN miniseries, and his Wolverine "Weapon X" run in MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS all being prime examples. I recommend the later collected trade reprint version of
WOLVERINE: WEAPON X (1993), with offset clearer printing and much more vibrant colors.
Smith is definitely up there among the finest artists in comics history. And while he doesn't impact me the same way as, say, Adams, Wrightson, Kaluta, Bolton, Golden or Rogers, his work is powerful elegant stuff that I wouldn't have wanted to miss.
