BARRY WINDSOR SMITH/OPUS I & II/RED NAILS/RAPIDSHARE LINKS
When I first started buying comic books it was about 1970 or so and like any good boy of the time I gravitated towards the Marvel titles. Other than Batman and the mystery/horror titles I never had much to do the DC comic books of the time unless they were drawn by Neil Adams. But I must have bought nearly every Marvel title during a period of about three or four years there. If there was one artist I had to choose out of all the great ones I admired that stood out from the pack it would have to be Barry Smith (later Barry Windsor Smith). His early work, and even the first couple issues of Conan, seemed pretty derivative of Jack Kirby and that would be an uncommon thing for the time. Even the great Jim Steranko was nothing but a Kirby clone for the longest time. But, In my opinion, by issue three of Conan the Barbarian he was finding his own direction and as the series progressed he would be drawing in a style that simply no one was working with or had prior to him in the mainstream comic book field. I always had some reservations about Sal Buscema’s (John’s younger brother) inks over Smith’s pencils but even those improved as well over time so that the pair turned out some of the best work done by Marvel at the time, or any time to be honest. Marvel branched out into the b/w magazine field and one title was Savage Sword of Conan, which featured two of Smith’s best works; The Frost Giant’s Daughter and Red Nails, both rendered entirely by Smith. Both were a couple of the best adaptations of the Robert E. Howard hero ever put to pen and paper.
- Rapidshare link to Opus I
- Rapidshare link to Opus II
- Rapidshare link to Red Nails
- Here is a link to a four part interview with Smith about the Opus project
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