Monsters: Barry Windsor-Smith

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Achievements in Ignorance: The project chose Logan because they thought he wouldn't be missed and because his military file showed he had remarkable stamina. They did not know he was a mutant with a powerful Healing Factor, Claws, and Super-Senses. The Anonymous Benefactor of the project did know, however, but chose not to inform the staff or the Professor. It's left ambiguous whether Logan would have even survived the bonding process without his healing. Barry Windsor-Smith’s Monsters (Fantagraphics), an epic, gorgeously illustrated work of horror, social trauma, and violence, was named Best New Graphic Novel during the 2022 Will Eisner Comic Awards ceremony, presented as an in-person event for the first time in three years at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, held July 21-24.

One of the things that I heard about the book that encouraged me to read it is that the original idea had its roots in Hulk, a kind of origin story, and maybe too was inspired by Frankenstein. The world creates Monsters, and we can’t quite control them. So that is interesting, or something we at least know and need to be reminded of from time to time. Violence begets violence, and you never completely leave it in the past. I recall My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris, where a girl who loves monster comics encounters the monsters of racism of the late sixties in Chicago, while we also meet a woman in her neighborhood who survived various abuses of anti-semitism. Unspeakable cruelty in every generation. Though there is more hope and humor in Ferris’s book than in most of Monsters (one key exception might be the psychic insights of a girl and her father that may point the way to some redemption, maybe).Levitz, Paul (2010). 75 Years of DC Comics The Art of Modern Mythmaking. Cologne, Germany: Taschen. p.626. ISBN 978-3-8365-1981-6. 'An Evening With Superman' This oversize art book has entered fan folklore because of the years it has spent in limbo. a b Gravett, Paul (30 April 2021). "Prometheus rebounds: An alternative path for the Incredible Hulk legend in Monsters by Barry Windsor-Smith". The Times Literary Supplement. Archived from the original on 29 April 2021 . Retrieved 29 April 2021. Shazam Award, Academy of Comic Book Arts Awards Best Individual Story ("Devil Wings over Shadizar," by Roy Thomas and Barry Smith, from Conan the Barbarian No. 6 and "Tower of the Elephant," by Roy Thomas and Barry Smith, from Conan the Barbarian #4) (nominated) [43] Eye Scream: The Professor pours hot coffee onto Logan's face and into his eyes. Not even for some experiment, just out of sheer sadism.

Rosenfeld, Jason (April 2021). "Barry Windsor-Smith's Monsters". The Brooklyn Rail. Archived from the original on 2 May 2021 . Retrieved 1 May 2021. Since leaving Valiant, Windsor-Smith has worked for a number of companies. For Malibu's Ultraverse line he co-created Rune with Chris Ulm, including a crossover one-shot comic titled Conan vs. Rune published by Marvel Comics in 1994 after they took over Malibu. As a result he once again came up against legal ownership problems, and the Rune stories have remained un-reprinted as a result. For Image Comics he worked on the crossover storyline " Wildstorm Rising", drawing and coloring Wildstorm Rising No. 1 (May 1995), and all eleven of the covers for the interlinked series. Windsor-Smith later said that he was talked into illustrating Wildstorm Rising, and regretted participating in it, stating that in reading the story and illustrating it, he could not understand the motivations of any of the characters, even when he read earlier Wildstorm books featuring the characters. He says he altered the plot in an attempt to improve it and his enthusiasm for it, later learning that writer James Robinson was not pleased with his doing so. [31] Implacable Man: One of the goals of the project is to create one. Logan was already superhumanly tough, but once he gains the Adamantium skeleton, he takes it to a new level. Climaxes when he is shown to survive a bath in molten nuclear waste and just keep coming. The question next becomes the book’s place within the medium writ large. The book’s size, scope, and grandiose prolonged production demand that it be evaluated on the level of other outsized works within the graphic novel medium. For better or worse, it begs to be evaluated on the grounds of whether or not it is a towering masterpiece, destined to be read for generations to come. As with the stories of the people in Monsters, the outcome of this examination is a messy one.

The first volume provides examples of the following tropes:

Didn't Think This Through: Making Wolverine into a living weapon and somehow expecting it to go well counts, though they initially thought he was just a regular, albeit tough, human. Continuing on with the experiments after realizing that he's already a nigh-indestructible, inhumanly strong mutant with a really bad temper is just begging to get hurt. Regarding the style and technique; Barry both wrote and illustrated Monsters. It’s clear that he used his 37 years wisely, as every single piece of every panel is completely necessary. There’s no fluff here. So, yeah, I both admired the artwork--found it brilliant, a pen and ink masterwork--and even admired aspects of the multi-layered, storytelling about a descent into madness, but I also found it very, very hard to read this story and look at. Red Herring: The unnamed "Professor" leading the project is a thin bald white man, and is introduced with his glasses refracting the words in the report he is reading, from "Experiment X" into "x men". This would readers to naturally assume that he is Charles Xavier, with the twist that Logan's mentor was behind his torture all along. He's actually a different character entirely, who in this series has No Name Given. A later comic revealed he was using the alias of "Professor Andre Thorton", with his real name being "Trett Hudson".