Windsor-Smith produced his first published work in 1967 and 1968 – single page "Powerhouse Pinups" of
Marvel Comics characters for
Terrific and
Fantastic comics, titles published by
Odhams Press that included licensed
Marvel Comics reprints for the UK market. Following this, he flew to the U.S. in summer 1968 with fellow artist
Steve Parkhouse for meetings at Marvel in New York. "I sent material first, and based solely upon a pleasant return note from Stan Lee|Stan [Lee]'s assistant
Linda Fite, my pal and me were at Marvel's doorstep in the blink of an eye." Largely due to his
Jack Kirbyesque style, Marvel Comics Editor Stan Lee gave him the job of drawing both the cover and story of
X-Men No. 53 (
cover-dated Feb. 1969), credited to Barry Smith as he was then known. He drew Marvel's
Daredevil #50–52 (March–May 1969), a Western short story, "Half Breed" (probably the story "Outcast" eventually published in
Western Gunfighters No. 4, Feb. 1971), and issue #12 of
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (May 1969), He continued to work at a distance for Marvel, providing the art for a number of stories in the horror anthology titles
Tower of Shadows and
Chamber of Darkness. In 1971, Windsor-Smith moved to the United States, having been granted a work permit. Comics historian
Les Daniels noted that Windsor-Smith's "initial efforts were slightly sketchy, but his technique progressed by leaps and bounds. Within a few months he had achieved a style never seen in comics before." During his run on
Conan the Barbarian, Windsor-Smith was involved in the writing as well. He and writer Roy Thomas adapted a number of R.E. Howard short stories, the aforementioned "The Frost-Giant's Daughter", "Tower of the Elephant", "Rogues in the House", and "Red Nails". As well as the art and story contributions, Windsor-Smith provided the covers for most issues. They worked on original adventures and characters based on R.E. Howard's characters – most notably the flame-haired warrior-woman,
Red Sonja – loosely based on a character from one of Howard's non-Conan stories, who has now become a major comics character in her own right – in "The Song of Red Sonja" in
Conan the Barbarian No. 24 (March 1973), Windsor-Smith's last issue of the title. By then he had worked on 21 of the first 24 issues of the series, missing only issues No. 17 and No. 18, and No. 22 (which was a reprint of issue #1), and both he and the title had won a number of awards. Windsor-Smith would later say that the reason he missed those issues was because he had quit the series a number of times as he was dissatisfied with the work and how the comics business worked, rather than the deadline problems Marvel quoted. In 2010,
Comics Bulletin ranked Thomas and Windsor-Smith's work on
Conan the Barbarian seventh on its list of the "Top 10 1970s Marvels". Windsor-Smith provided the art for a number of other Marvel Comics titles, including the
Ka-Zar stories in
Astonishing Tales #3–6 (December 1970 – June 1971) and No. 10 (February 1972), three further issues of
The Avengers (#98–100, April–June 1972) – about which he would later remember the nightmare of drawing "all those bloody characters that I didn't give tuppence about", both of which were apparently re-scripted by Stan Lee after being drawn to Lee's original scripts. Windsor-Smith was by now becoming disillusioned with the comics industry and the way in which in his opinion the writers and artists were being exploited: "I needed to be free of constraints and policies that were imposed by the dictates of creating entertainment for children" a one-off oversize
Marvel Treasury Edition, he produced no more comics work until 1983. At this point he changed his professional surname to Windsor-Smith, adding his mother's surname to his own, and began to pursue a career in fine art. Granted residential status in the United States in 1974, Windsor-Smith, along with his partner Linda Lessman, set up
Gorblimey Press, through which he released a small number of limited-edition prints of fantasy-based subjects that proved popular. In 1976 Windsor-Smith published
The Gorblimey Press Catalogue, a high quality index to the work published by Gorblimey Press, with full-page reproductions of each piece. Prior to that, in 1975, together with
Jeff Jones,
Michael Kaluta, and
Bernie Wrightson, he was one of four comic book artists-turned-fine-illustrator/painters who formed a small artist's loft commune in Manhattan known as
The Studio, with the aim of pursuing creative products outside the constraints of comic book commercialism. By 1979 they had produced enough material to issue an art book under the name
The Studio, which was published by
Dragon's Dream.
1980s Smith designed and drew the fictitious comic strip "Mandro" for the 1981
Oliver Stone horror film
The Hand. In the film, the artwork is used as that of character Jon Lansdale, a comic book illustrator played by
Michael Caine. Stone explains the hiring of Smith thus: I'd always been a fan of his. I think I fell in love with his version of Conan before I had even read the Howard books. He did more for that comic than anyone…Since the cartoonist was drawing a Conan-type character, Barry was the logical choice. Oddly enough, Barry was English, as was Michael, and they both have sandy blond hair. When they first met, they discovered that they're both about 6' 2", and that they both have the same sort of
East End wit. The similarity was quite amazing. for which Windsor-Smith was artist and colorist over
Herb Trimpe layouts for the first three issues, and drew and colored alone for the fourth. Although he would return to the X-Men once a year for the next three years, (
Uncanny X-Men No. 198, #205 and #214), his mainstream comics output remained limited throughout the rest of the 1980s, amounting to just one issue each of
Fantastic Four (#296, November 1986) and
Daredevil (#236, November 1986), two issues of
Iron Man (#232, July 1988 and No. 243, June 1989), two pages for DC Comics'
Heroes Against Hunger benefit project, and two small pieces for the
Harvey Award-winning comics anthology
A1 published by
Atomeka Press. In 1987 he returned to his first major success and provided new painted covers for nine issues of Marvel's Conan reprint title
The Conan Saga, all issues which contained black-and-white reprints of his original 1970s stories. his telling of the origin of the X-Men character
Wolverine which he wrote, drew, inked, colored, and co-lettered. Though
Weapon X depicts Wolverine being infused with adamantium, acquiring claws, and lapsing into his "animal state" for the first time, Windsor-Smith has denied that he intended the story as Wolverine's origin: "I didn't realize that I was doing anything that important in the Wolverine mythos or canon. ... If it's important in the Wolverine canon, if I'd thought of it that way, I probably would have had to be begged off doing it because it's somebody else's game. I was just looking for something to do." In late 1991, he was approached by
Valiant Comics, a new comics publisher founded by former Marvel Comics writer and editor-in-chief
Jim Shooter, and asked to act as their creative director and lead artist. Valiant had obtained a number of characters originally published in the 1960s and 1970s by
Gold Key Comics:
Magnus Robot Fighter,
Doctor Solar and
Turok Dinosaur Hunter, and added their own original titles to the roster, including
Harbinger,
X-O Manowar,
Shadowman,
Archer and Armstrong,
Eternal Warrior,
Bloodshot,
Ninjak, and
Rai. Windsor-Smith was the chief designer of the "
Unity" crossover storyline for Valiant Comics, and writer and artist for most of the first dozen issues of the title
Archer and Armstrong. By focusing on storytelling and innovative marketing practices such as a tightly knit continuity, crossovers and send away issues Valiant quickly became a considerable success story, He left Valiant soon after Jim Shooter's departure from the company. Smith has called work-for-hire contracts "a legal but unethical instrument designed to rape and plunder young talents of every possible prerogative they would otherwise possess if they had the fortune to work for more scrupulous, morally invested, publishers." 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. In 1995 Windsor-Smith created an oversized anthology series,
Barry Windsor-Smith: Storyteller for
Dark Horse Comics that contained three ongoing features: "The Paradoxman", a dark science-fiction tale, "Young GODS", a homage to Jack Kirby's
Thor and
New Gods series, and "The Freebooters", a lighthearted action series about an ageing Conan-like character grown older and heavier and now running a tavern. He cancelled
Storyteller after nine issues, even though a tenth issue had been completed; since then
Fantagraphics has issued hardcover collections of "Young GODS" and "The Freebooters". Each of these hardcover volumes includes supplemental features, essays and previously unseen art. Fantagraphics has published Windsor-Smith's
Adastra in Africa, a hardcover starring a character from "Young GODS" in a story originally intended to be published as "Lifedeath III" for Marvel's
X-Men, with the character
Storm. In 1999 Fantagraphics published two volumes of
BWS – Opus, a hardcover art books featuring Windsor-Smith's work from throughout his career, including an autobiographical story, "Time Rise", which features details of his experiences with seemingly paranormal phenomena. He was working on a
Superman story in 1999 that has
not yet seen print.
2000s Windsor-Smith created a story called "UFO POV," an 11-page story in
Streetwise (July 2000), a trade paperback anthology published by
TwoMorrows Publishing. In 2000 and 2001 he also produced cover art for a number of Marvel titles including Grant Morrison's
New X-Men, and drew five pages of
Wolverine #166 (Sept. 2001), a "Weapon X" tie-in written by
Frank Tieri. In January 2004, Fantagraphics published Windsor-Smith's
Young Gods and Friends, a hardcover collecting material from
Barry Windsor-Smith: Storyteller along with new material. November 2005 saw a follow-up hardcover titled
The Freebooters, again collecting material from
Storyteller with new material. A planned third and final volume, collecting "The Paradoxman" serial, has not yet been released. In January 2006, Windsor-Smith announced on the website Comic Book Galaxy that he was in negotiations to publish a
graphic novel for Marvel Comics starring The Thing.
2020s Windsor-Smith's next work was
Monsters, a 366-page graphic novel that began life as a 23-page
Hulk story in 1984 or 1985, and was released on 27 April 2021 by Fantagraphics, Windsor-Smith's first book in 16 years. Windsor-Smith describes the book as one that "explores the life and times of two disparate American families fatefully connected by an abandoned Nazi project in genetic engineering that has been covertly revived by the US government". Windsor-Smith wrote, drew, inked, and lettered the entire graphic novel, which Sam Leith, writing for
The Guardian, said was "a rare niche" that Windsor-Smith had carved out for himself as an
auteur. The book won the 2022
Eisner Awards for Best Graphic Novel, Best Writer/Artist, and Best Lettering. ==Artistic style==