Monsters by Barry Windsor-Smith

A dark and disturbing graphic masterpiece

I’m a lifelong reader of comic books, and Barry Windsor-Smith is one of my favorite artists—easily top 3 if not number one (Will Eisner and Jack Kirby would be high on my list as well, just to show you what league BWS is in). Not to sell him short, Windsor-Smith is also a writer of comics, and, unlike many in the superhero line, he often inks, colors, and sometimes even letters his own pages. Early in his career, Windsor-Smith developed an idiosyncratic style, highly detailed, lyrical, and romantic in nature, resembling what comics might look like if drawn by the Pre-Raphaelite painters. His best-known work is probably his Weapon X story from 1990 to 1991, which, when combined into graphic novel form, comprises the definitive Wolverine origin story. Having started his career with Marvel in 1969, Windsor-Smith has been a comics professional as long as I’ve been alive, and at 75 he is still going strong. He recently produced what might be his magnum opus. His graphic novel Monsters, a 365-page black-and-white hardcover, was published in 2022 by Fantagraphics Books. Monsters won the Eisner Awards that year for Best Graphic Novel, Best Writer/Artist, and even Best Letterer (Windsor-Smith himself).

In the 1960s, a young man named Bobby Bailey walks into an army recruitment office, hoping to enlist. Because of his lack of education and the fact that he lost an eye when he was younger, the recruiting officer, Elias McFarland, won’t take him for the regular army. He does, however, recommend Bobby for a secret government program that might be able to use him. This project, dubbed Prometheus, turns out to be a twisted Captain America-esque experiment, originally conceived by the Nazis, of using genetic engineering to create some kind of superhuman soldier. McFarland soon regrets having signed Bobby up to be a guinea pig for Prometheus. Tortured by guilt, he decides to investigate what became of Bobby. As Bobby’s past and present are gradually revealed, Windsor-Smith flashes back to Bobby’s childhood and beyond to his father’s encounter with Nazis in World War II. Those events from the past set in motion a tragic story, decades in the making, involving a complex web of connections between the Bailey and McFarland families, an Ohio police officer, and a Nazi scientist.

Monsters is a deeply dark and disturbing work. It has some science fiction elements that comics readers will be familiar with, but it is a highly literary novel in its character development and psychological themes. Because of its prodigious length, expert plotting, and ready-made storyboards, this novel reads like a feature film just waiting to be made. Given the subject matter, it would probably be an indie arthouse horror film from studio A24, directed by somebody like Robert Eggers or Nicolas Winding Refn. This is not a story for the faint of heart, as it includes scenes of torture, child and spousal abuse, murder, and rape, but these scenes are brief and integral to the story, not gratuitous.

The writing is ambitious, and the art is impeccable. Visually and narratively, Monsters calls to mind Will Eisner’s graphic novels of the 1970s and ‘80s, such as his A Contract with God trilogy. The lengthy page count allows Windsor-Smith to take his time telling the story. Conversations between the characters run their course as they would in real life, without feeling crammed into a limited number of panels. Who else in comics today devotes that kind of time and effort to character development? Maybe once or twice a decade, much like Eisner, a comics auteur comes along that shows us the apex of what the comic art form can be. Right now, Windsor-Smith is that artist. In terms of literary merit, Monsters can hold its own against most works of contemporary fiction, and among graphic novels, Monsters is a masterpiece.

A page from Monsters (from the publisher’s website)