The year is 1964. Bobby Bailey doesn’t realize he is about to fulfill histragic destiny when he walks into a US Army recruitment office to joinup. Close-mouthed, damaged, innocent, trying to forget a past andlooking for a future, it turns out that Bailey is the perfect candidate for asecret U.S. government experimental program, an unholy continuation ofa genetics program that was discovered in Nazi Germany nearly 20 yearsearlier in the waning days of World War II. Bailey’s only ally and protector,Sergeant McFarland, intervenes, which sets off a chain of cascading eventsthat spin out of everyone’s control. As the titular monsters of the titlemultiply, becoming real and metaphorical, literal and ironic, the storyreaches its emotional and moral reckoning.Monstersis the legendary project Barry Windsor-Smith has beenworking on for over 35 years. A 380-page tour de force of visual storytelling,Monsters’ narrative canvas is both vast and deep: part familial drama, part political thriller, part metaphysical journey, it is an intimate portrait ofindividuals struggling to reclaim their lives and an epic political odysseyacross two generations of American history. Trauma, fate, conscience,and redemption are just a few of the themes that intersect in the mostambitious graphic novel of Windsor-Smith’s career.Monstersis rendered in Windsor-Smith’s impeccable pen-and-inktechnique, the visual storytelling with its sensitivity to gesture andcomposition is the most sophisticated of the artist’s career. There arepassages of heartbreaking tenderness, of excruciating pain, and devastatingviolence. It is surely one of the most intense graphic novels ever drawn.
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