He subsequently created an oversized anthology series, Barry Windsor-Smith: Storyteller through Dark Horse Comics, though it was cancelled after nine issues.

Windsor-Smith released his subsequent work through Fantagraphics, including the Storyteller spin-off Adastra in Africa, which had originally been conceived as a "Lifedeath III" story for Storm; two volumes of the retrospective hardcover art book Opus; and Monsters, a 360-page hardcover published in 2021 that had originally been conceived in the mid-1980s as a Hulk story.

[1][2] He displayed artistic abilities at an early age and practiced drawing by copying Wally Wood artwork in Mad magazine and the works of Leonardo da Vinci, with little regard for what was or wasn't considered fine art.

[3] His parents supported him in following an arts education and he attended East Ham Technical College for three years, earning degrees in Industrial Design and Illustration.

"I sent material first, and based solely upon a pleasant return note from Stan [Lee]'s assistant Linda Fite, my pal and me were at Marvel's doorstep in the blink of an eye.

"[3] Largely due to his Jack Kirbyesque style,[4] Marvel Comics Editor Stan Lee gave him the job of drawing both the cover and story of X-Men No.

Windsor-Smith later called his early art "amateur and klutzy" and a "less than skillful" Kirby imitation, but Stan Lee liked it enough to give him more work.

[7] He continued to work at a distance for Marvel, providing the art for a number of stories in the horror anthology titles Tower of Shadows and Chamber of Darkness.

[5] Thomas, a long-time fan of Robert E. Howard's 1930 pulp-fiction character Conan the Barbarian, had Windsor-Smith provide art for a sword and sorcery story, "Starr the Slayer", in Chamber of Darkness No.

Comics historian Les Daniels noted that Windsor-Smith's "initial efforts were slightly sketchy, but his technique progressed by leaps and bounds.

[11] In 2010, Comics Bulletin ranked Thomas and Windsor-Smith's work on Conan the Barbarian seventh on its list of the "Top 10 1970s Marvels".

[12] Windsor-Smith provided the art for a number of other Marvel Comics titles, including the Ka-Zar stories in Astonishing Tales #3–6 (December 1970 – June 1971) and No.

10 (February 1972),[13] three further issues of The Avengers (#98–100, April–June 1972)[14] – about which he would later remember the nightmare of drawing "all those bloody characters that I didn't give tuppence about",[3] Iron Man No.

Granted residential status in the United States in 1974, Windsor-Smith, along with his partner Linda Lessman, set up Gorblimey Press,[20] through which he released a small number of limited-edition prints of fantasy-based subjects that proved popular.

[24] Smith designed and drew the fictitious comic strip "Mandro" for the 1981 Oliver Stone horror film The Hand.

[25]Windsor-Smith returned to mainstream comics work for Marvel in 1983 with two pieces, a short mystical tale of love, "The Beguiling", and a dark, humorous two-page black-and-white story, "A Path of Stars", both in Epic Illustrated No.

16 (February 1983), which featured a page-and-a-half Windsor-Smith spread accompanying an Archie Goodwin text story called "The Horde" (which appears to be a drawing of Conan and Valeria in battle).

Valiant had obtained a number of characters originally published in the 1960s and 1970s by Gold Key Comics: Magnus Robot Fighter, Doctor Solar and Turok Dinosaur Hunter, and added their own original titles to the roster, including Harbinger, X-O Manowar, Shadowman, Archer and Armstrong, Eternal Warrior, Bloodshot, Ninjak, and Rai.

[28] Windsor-Smith was the chief designer of the "Unity" crossover storyline for Valiant Comics, and writer and artist for most of the first dozen issues of the title Archer and Armstrong.

Smith has called work-for-hire contracts "a legal but unethical instrument designed to rape and plunder young talents of every possible prerogative they would otherwise possess if they had the fortune to work for more scrupulous, morally invested, publishers.

"[30] Of his work for Valiant, and the problems he encountered there over legal ownership of titles and characters, Windsor-Smith said in 2008, "In the 1970s I was constantly asked when I would 'do Conan again'.

In 2000 and 2001 he also produced cover art for a number of Marvel titles including Grant Morrison's New X-Men, and drew five pages of Wolverine #166 (Sept. 2001), a "Weapon X" tie-in written by Frank Tieri.

Windsor-Smith describes the book as one that "explores the life and times of two disparate American families fatefully connected by an abandoned Nazi project in genetic engineering that has been covertly revived by the US government".

[11] During his time on Conan the Barbarian, Windsor-Smith developed an art style preferring Romantic illustration over sequential storytelling that had influences from fine artists such as Howard Pyle and Andrew Wyeth.