BARRY SMITH, now, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH!!!

Mr. Smith, whom I had the pleasure of meeting years ago in Boston, was an integral part of THE STUDIO, with his mates, MW KALUTA, JEFFREY JONES, and BERNIE WRIGHTSON (blog entries either here or being developed as of this writing).
Smith was virtually two different individuals, or it seemed so for a while. His inexpert work on the MARVEL COMICS titles NICK FURY: AGENT OF S.H.I.E.LD. and DAREDEVIL did indicate that there was talent there, but it seemed that Smith's forté was creating homages to other cartoonists.
Suddenly, however, Smith "set the {comic book} world on fire" with his stunning drawing on the licensed MARVEL COMICS series CONAN THE BARBARIAN. Famed comic book scribe Roy Thomas, one of MARVEL's first writers to work on writing many of the MARVEL titles other than Stan Lee, the great "face" of the company, and co-creator of many hit titles, took the pulp magazine creation of the late Robert Ervin Howard and teamed with Smith on 22 issues of the title. Howard's character had newfound popularity due to the 1960's best-selling reprintings of the Howard stories, by LANCER BOOKS, which had dynamic covers by legendary fantasy painter, FRANK FRAZETTA. Sadly,for the artistic end of MARVEL's early CONAN run,the non-Smith two issues were drawn by Gil Kane, and one issue was a partial reprint. I do not mean to dismiss the work of Kane, a brilliant cartoonist whose work on CONAN was embellished by RALPH REESE, but a new title should have more artistic continuity than that. It is unfortunate that Frank Frazetta did not paint covers for MARVEL's slew of CONAN-related titles.
In my opinion, the title lost much of it's lustre when Smith left the book, having outdone himself on the last few books, even though the new artistic choice was John Buscema, who knew how to draw as well as any of the best cartoonists in the comic book business. It is all relative, like how some film buffs will only accept Sean Connery as "the" JAMES BOND, or the way in which many other movie enthusiasts only want to see Basil Rathbone as SHERLOCK HOLMES, but I could never get into Buscema's CONAN.
Smith also drew a few beautiful atmospheric and stylish issues of THE AVENGERS, not to be confused with the television characters of that name from Smith's native England.
After Smith's departure from CONAN, and then MARVEL COMICS, his work began to appear under his own imprint, GORBLIMEY PRESS, and there was another burst of talent evident there, Smith now began to call himself Barry Windsor-Smith, and therein lies further reasoning behind my assertion that he almost seemed like two people.
Smith was not drawing his own comic books, but creating lavish "fine art" type works.
Oddly, though, the perception of there being "two Smiths" is not limited to my earlier points, as Smith went through other periods in his career, drawing other titles for MARVEL, like a revamped version of JACK KIRBY's character, MACHINE MAN, who was spun off from MARVEL's adaptation of the film 2001: A SPACE ODDYSSEY.
Smith also _wrote_ and drew "Weapon X", a chapter series that appeared in MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS, a series about the origins of the very popular character "Wolverine", from the comic books about the X-MEN, which of course are now an immensely successful theatrical movie series, and some earlier animated cartoons.
Smith also re-invented himself again, drawing comic books such as ARCHER & ARMSTRONG and a new version of DOCTOR SOLAR, MAN OF THE ATOM, now simply called SOLAR, at VALIANT COMICS, for former MARVEL editor-in-chief, Jim Shooter.
These new works made Smith's drawing seem more homogenous, but, also, showed a more confident, less experimental _comc book cartoonist_.
I love the early Smith CONAN books, and much of his other comic book work. but the older Smith seems content to "just draw comics", rather than create artistic masterpieces, though I do believe that some of his fine art works truly _are_ masterpieces, within the world of fantasy illustration.
To make his career yet more innovative, though,Windsor-Smith also created the large format comic book BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH: STORYTELLER, for DARK HORSE COMICS, which carried three different BWS drawn features, and on of these begat the "spin-off" graphic novel. AD ASTRA IN AFRICA.
Barry also drew works for MALIBU and IMAGE COMICS, keeping his drawing visible in regular comic books, and then working with Gary Groth and Kim Thompson at FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS to collect examples of his work, with text, in two books called OPUS, not to be confused with Berk Breathed's comic strip penguin.
In any case, Smith's work is bound to be long-remembered, he is indeed a "cartoonist great", even though I am uncertain as to how the nearly sixty year old Windsor-Smith would feel about my calling him that.
;o)
Thanks to Wikipedia, th internet encyclopedia, at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Windsor-Smith

for refreshing my memory on the career of BWS!!!