Barry Windsor-Smith is one of those names I heard in comic circles but never really attached it to anything. Growing up and reading comics during the 90’s I knew a lot about Weapon-X, but very little about person behind it. Now that I’m a grown up nerd I make sure to familiarize myself with creators behind a project more than just gawking over the cool artwork like I did when I dreamed of making comics myself back in Jr. High. That means if you mention Grant Morrison, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Tom King and Kelly Thompson, I’ll know who you’re talking about as if you had said Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane or Erik Larsen, a few of my comic-art heroes from back in the day. Still, I have no idea who Barry Windsor-Smith is except to say that his comic-making is exceptional. And his latest graphic novel-hailed as a masterpiece-is one of the most unsettling books I’ve ever read.
I’m going to try and encourage you to read this book, but this thing should really come with some trigger warnings. I’m neither faint of heart nor easily rattled. I can have a dark sense of humor and make jokes during some of the bleakest moments, but this book gets heavy and then stays there. I’m gonna’ level with you; I hop on here and write up reviews for fun, but I’m no real critic. I’m just a comic fan with an English degree that really enjoys writing and the internet lets me do that and share it for free. Forgive me if I have a hard time separating the two, but with the following I’m going to give a good hard swing.
Monsters weaves a story about two families and the consequences of government military human experimentation has on the person who is the connective tissue between the two. By moving forward and backward through time Windsor-Smith unpacks a story that’s dense with the horrors of World War II, human experimentation, abuse at the hands of a soldier returning home, and the reckoning that comes with making the right decision far too late. To say I did not fully know what I was getting into when I started this book is an understatement. But when it tops so many best-of lists it’s hard for me to resist at times-and yet I think I might’ve learned my lesson here.
What the pages of this book revealed to me are this: Barry Windsor-Smith is one of the best comic artists of all time. The entire comic is black and white which shows off Windsor-Smith’s use of classic crosshatching to achieve lighting and a sort of grey scale that you might see being used by Manga artists with screen tones. It’s a classical way of mark making and BWS employs it expertly. Yet BWS exists seemingly on the outside of the comic industry. He’s not alone though. I feel the same way about Craig Thompson, creator behind Blankets and his most recent Ginseng Root. Thompson, Windsor-Smith and even more recently Emil Ferris are like comic royalty descending from on high every decade or so to bestow upon the comic community an Immense and Important work. Then they retreat back into their introverted lives maybe to be heard from again but who knows? Like literary cryptids we get glimpses of them here and there, but only enough to ask if they really exist. To be fair, this was the trajectory I was hoping to be on and then social media came along and ruined everything. But I digress.
The story begins innocently enough with a very Universal Monsters type opening: a shadowy figure, who the reader will come to understand later, holds a boy in his arms. The boy is hurt. His mother, we presume, is looking for the boy, finds him and the figure. She snatches his weak body away and exclaims: “You monster!” A title card: FOURTEEN YEARS LATER and the boy is now a man and walking into an army recruitment office. A very solid start to a decent into Hell. Any further summary would spoil the story so I’ll just relate what it was like to read it. It’s as if Stephen King wrote the Captain America origin story. When I learned BWS was behind the Weapon-X storyline, I could see echoes of that throughout this story minus any superhero pretense. Monsters has a real sense of stakes, a real sense of dread, a real sense of suspense. And it is so, so sad. I realized I was holding my breath more than once during the story, a feat that’s not easily achieved when the pictures are there on the page, but BWS makes it look easy.
I’d be lying if I said I love this book. Because of the subject matter, it was a difficult read. Should it be read? Maybe? Maybe not? Although it isn’t a “war story” it’s a story informed by war-time tactics. Most of them, quite extreme. Like some really great war movies, they can expose you to what it was like, but if you never experience war, or war movies, or war stories, that doesn’t mean you can’t respect the sacrifices made or imagine how hard it can be to live through it. Is this book a masterpiece, as it’s reputation claims? Yes. Which is why I’m so divided on this book.
Will I read it again? No, in part because I’m sure it’ll stick with me for a while. But was it good? The art is incredible. Barry Windsor-Smith’s been making comics for a long time and it definitely shows. He knows his way around a page and he knows how to wield a pen. The story is well constructed and well paced. Even with the shifts back and forth through time, I never felt lost or had trouble connecting the past with the present. Did it make me feel a certain way? Most definitely. Based on those merits, the book is great. It seems to go without saying-the book is titled Monsters for crying out loud-but be prepared, none of the monsters found within make the cover of the book, which are the most unsettling monsters of all.
10\10
Writer/Artist: Barry Windsor-Smith
Publisher: Fantagraphics 2021