The Barry Windsor-Smith Conan Archives volume 1 HC
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For all of you Conan true fans, Dark Horse has something special installed for you. The Barry Windsor-Smith Conan Archives Volume 1 HC, ladies and gentlemen.
‘’In 1970, Barry Windsor-Smith burst onto the comic-book scene with his dynamic portrayal of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, altering the course of the blue-eyed Cimmerian forever, and cementing himself as one of the greatest artists to touch pencil to paper. Nearly forty years later, Dark Horse Comics, in the tradition of the Dark Horse Archives collections, reprints Barry Windsor-Smith’s entire run on Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian in two fine hardcover volumes!’’
Now available for PRE-ORDER and truly available on January 20, 2010 (damn, lots of months), the The Barry Windsor-Smith Conan Archives volume 1 collects legendary Conan tales drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith, such as The Tower of the Elephant and Rogues in the House, in their original color palette. I guess that leaves Red Nails and others for the second volume. This first volume contains the first half of Barry’s run on Conan, coming in a hardcover 200 full-color-pages edition. Barry Windsor Smith is THE Conan artist for many Conan lovers, having an unique style of drawing, his run with this character being unfortunately short for his huge talent. Having defined Conan for a whole generation of readers, makes you wonder what would have happened if the artistic pair Barry/John would have stayed together for more than 24 issues.
Also, for those of you who cannot wait, Barry Windsor-Smith’s run on Conan was reprinted is Chronicles of Conan TBP volumes that you can find HERE.
You can find his official site on the address barrywindsor-smith.com.
Just to point out that this will NOT use the original color palette but the ghastly Chronicles of Conan colors. So it’s a sham and will not show the delicate linework of Barry Smith. Don’t buy it.
Oh! Is like Blade: The Vampire Slayer black and white volume that screwed up all the linework of Tony DeZuniga. I was regretting for buying it. Thanks for the info :D
This book looked like it was going to follow much in the manner of Marvel’s Omnibus series insofar as restoring the original color palette and linework to what should have been one of the most exciting reprints in recent comicdom.
Dark Horse have now abandoned that idea and are going to source the book from their hideously re-coloured “Chronicles of Conan” series. Overwrought colours with Barry Smith’s linework wrecked in the process.
So save your money, if you actually go and buy this book your endorsing stupid publishers. There were people at Dark Horse who tried to stand out against this decision but bean counters citing economic considerations won the day.
My advice would be to seek out the original comics themselves or some of the Marvel reprints either of which would be better in terms of fidelity to Smith’s original linework and colour guides than this ghastly compromise is going to be.
If short term economics are what Dark Horse execs respond to than just leave them with a pile of unsold books as the final response to their short term thinking.
I hope that will teach Dark Horse a proper lesson regarding bad reprints.
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