Bruce G. Costa: I'll tell you, I've been reading your stuff since 1970, so your new STORYTELLER series is more and merrier for me.
Barry Windsor-Smith: Thanks!
Costa: It's also a good look at your writing and your ideas...
Windsor-Smith: Yeah, this is the whole thing coming together finally, after all these years.
Costa: It looks like you're having a good time with it.
Windsor-Smith: [laughing] Yeah, well, that's what you tell the publicist. I actually do enjoy it, but I'm telling you, it's a real hard drive producing this amount of work.
Costa: I can't believe how much work it is! As we're talking I'm looking at the opening double-page spread from Barry Windsor-Smith: STORYTELLER #1, the first page of "The Freebooters." So many artists in this industry use a double-page spread as a labor-saving device...
Windsor-Smith: Right!
Costa:... but in your case...
Windsor-Smith: I do it the other way around! I guess nobody told me! I've got it ass-backwards...
Costa: Well, for what it's worth, one reads it ass-backwards. I can usually spend about a quarter of the time looking at a double-page spread as I do looking at two normally-panelled pages but, man! I sit here staring at every little detail you've put into the spread...
Windsor-Smith: There's going to be plenty of those, too. That's obviously a big, panoramic shot of Shahariza, the eastern city that "The Freebooters" takes place in. By the fourth or fifth issue the city is going to become very much like another character. The city itself is very integral to the
story and the characters' interactions, so there's no way I'm just going to throw away a couple of outlines and say, well, "This is a city." You've got to get in there and draw the thing, like you're right at home.
That double-page spread was actually drawn about sixteen years ago.
Costa: No kidding!
Windsor-Smith: I started "The Freebooters" in 1980.
Costa: Did "The Freebooters" appear anywhere or has this concept been percolating all this time?
Windsor-Smith: No, no -- I was still painting at that time. I was still doing easel work -- pictures and stuff. But I had this idea that I wanted to tell the story of the Freebooters. I drew maybe eight to twelve pages of it. It took about 16 years for the whole thing to come together in my head. I'm doing it now, but I'll let you know -- when I approach the stories for "The Freebooters," I really am not that sure of what's going to happen next. I'm giving as much leeway to the characters as I can. I need to give them their own personalities, their own foibles, their own senses and feelings about things. Once those characters are established it's very difficult to step outside of them and try to direct a story by forcing them to do something. They have to go their own way. I'm a very easy director. I let the characters tell their own story. [For example,] Uta-Prime [the evil, antagonistic priest] has got literally two souls living inside of him. He's constantly arguing with himself -- quite literally arguing with himself. His face and body will say one thing, then his face and body will contradict him completely. He's got these two personalities: one is like
Napoleon and the other is like Oscar Wilde -- they are complete opposites of each other. So that's gonna make for some pretty bizarre reading, too!
Costa: [laughing] I'll tell you, it's been a lot of fun.
Windsor-Smith: I'm really glad to hear it.
Costa: Really, really a lot of fun. I think that everybody that has been following your career will feel themselves sated once again.
Windsor-Smith: Thanks. I really needed to hear that. This is the big thing, Bruce. STORYTELLER is the main event of my career. I've been doing this stuff for a quarter century; I've always wanted to just tell it the way I wanted to tell it, without intervention. It's the first time in my career that I'm doing something that I don't have to apologize for. If the script is crap then it's my fault. If something else doesn't work out, then blame me.
I've done a lot of comics, a lot of characters, a lot of styles. A lot of things have changed around me, too. Comic books today -- it's all so bleedin' serious. In STORYTELLER there's a lot of serious stuff that's actually going to happen. The things that happen most especially to Paradoxman are really quite serious -- the Third World War and alien machinations and all of this sort of stuff. In "The Freebooters" it eventually will be all about the end of the world at the hands of a devil beast from the dark shades of everybody's deepest imagination -- how the heck are we gonna stop that? And with "Young Gods" you've got a whole other thing -- it's a completely marital situation where there was supposed to be a meeting of the worlds like you used to see in the 17th century -- the princess is married to the prince royale so that half of Europe is going to maintain peace for the next 60 years. In the case of "Young Gods," the marriage doesn't
come off. It's sitting right there, hours away, and they blow it. There's serious stuff.
But there's plenty of wild, funny stuff, too. I just keep thinking that this is really a nice balance of the way to present entertaining characters, to not take yourself too seriously. All this grim
superhero stuff that's going around nowadays -- haven't we all seen enough of this stuff? It's all so bloody serious, yet you can't take it too seriously because it's all so pompous, it's all so bloddy self-concerned. Who needs it, for crying out loud? Life is serious enough; we don't need it in our comic books. Let's have some fun here.
Costa: What made you choose Dark Horse as the publisher for STORYTELLER?
Windsor-Smith: Mike Richardson has always been after me to do something with Dark Horse, and with the advent of the concept finally gelling with me that I'm not a cartoonist, I'm not an illustrator, I'm not this, I'm not that -- what I've been all along is a storyteller. Having that title
finally gel with me, wondering who I could go to in this industry and say, "I want to put out a book called STORYTELLER" when all the other books out there are called Kill Blood Death or something... So I talked to Mike Richardson, and he says, "Hey, cool! Go with it!" Who else should publish a thing like this?
It's meant to be a revolution. Marvel wouldn't want to know about that because it doesn't involve the Webslinger or the X-thing. Image wouldn't want to know because it doesn't involve Kill Blood Death, and on and on. So Mike seemed like the perfect choice, and that's why it's Dark
Horse.
Costa: Are these the three storylines that will continue, and is STORYTELLER an ongoing series indefinitely?
Windsor-Smith: I'm assuming so. I do have endings for each current story. "The Freebooters" are going to have to face the end of the world at some point. "The Paradoxman" is going to have to figure out how all this stuff happened to him, and "Young Gods'" Heros and Celestra (his wife-to-be) are going to have to either reconcile or cause a massive intergalactic war. So there are endings to these stories that have all been mapped out a long time ago. But how I get to these endings is another thing entirely. As I say, once I turn these characters into real characters, they will determine how long the story takes, what angles they go off on. I'm really at the characters' beck and call.
Costa: Why did you choose a larger-size format for STORYTELLER?
Windsor-Smith: STORYTELLER is a big idea. Why not print it big?
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Barry Windsor-Smith: STORYTELLER #1 is by Barry Windsor-Smith, with Windsor-Smith Studio. The full-color, 40-page, $4.95, first issue ships October 2, 1996.