Young Gods and Friends


By Barry Windsor Smith (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-491-8 (HB)

Barry Windsor Smith is a consummate creator whose work has moved millions and a principled artist who has always been poorly served by the mainstream publishing houses. Whether with his co-creation of Sword-and-Sorcery comics via Conan the Barbarian or his later work-for-hire material for The Thing (in Marvel Fanfare #15 – and utterly hilarious), Machine Man, Iron Man, X-Men, Weapon X or his tremendously addictive original run of Archer & Armstrong for Valiant Comics with Jim Shooter, BWS’ stunning visuals always entranced but never led to anything long-lived or substantial… and always the problem seems to be the clash between business ethics and creative freedom…

In 1995 Dark Horse, an outfit specialising in licensed and creator-owned properties, offered him a carte-blanche chance to do it his way in his own tabloid-sized anthology – Barry Windsor-Smith: Storyteller. The magazine carried three features written and drawn by the artist; The Paradoxman, The Freebooters and Young Gods. Although the work was simply stunning, it soon became apparent independent publishers could be cut from the same cloth as the mainstream…

It’s not my business to comment on that: I’ve been both freelancer and publisher so I know there are at least two sides to everything (and you can share Mr. Windsor Smith’s in this stunning collection from Fantagraphics available in oversized hardback and digital editions). The series ended acrimoniously in 1997 after nine issues with all the stories unfinished. This tome collected all the published material of one strip-strand, including chapters still in progress at the time of the split, some new and reformatted material and other extras that fans and lovers of whimsical fiction would be crazy to miss, backed-up by fascinating commentary and insights from the creator himself.

But it is still incomplete and that’s a true shame…

Created as a light-hearted and wittily arch tribute to Jack Kirby’s majestic pantheon of cosmic comic deities, Young Gods and Friends nominally stars foul-mouthed earthbound goddess Adastra, just getting by in contemporary times as a pizza-delivery person in New York City. However, it all slowly and hilariously builds, spreading into a mythico-graphic Waiting for Godot tribute as we trace her past, discover warring pantheons that decided arranged weddings were better than Ragnaroks and meet those bold and heroic nuptualists who would do and have done anything to avoid the arrangement: becoming delightfully diverted down a dozen different paths as the story oh-so-slowly builds.

As I’ve mentioned, the series came to an abrupt halt with the 9th episode, but there was a tenth ready and that is shimmied in here, as well as material and fragments that would have been supplemented the first dozen instalments – including deleted scenes, outtakes and reworked snippets.

On a purely artistic level of artistic appreciation, this collection and extrapolation is a sheer delight; with superb art, splendid writing and all sorts of added extras, but the hungry story-consumer in me can’t help but yearn for what might have been and how much has been lost.

Beautiful wry, witty and completely enchanting – and tragically disappointing because of that…

Enjoy it if you can…
™ & © 2003 Barry Windsor Smith. All Rights Reserved.