A panel from Monsters by Barry Windsor-Smith. Photograph: Jonathan Cape A panel from Monsters by Barry Windsor-Smith. Photograph: Jonathan Cape Wed 12 May 2021 10.01 EDT Last modified on Mon 17 May 2021 07.10 EDT H ow long would you wait for a comic? My 10-year-old son, staking out the letterbox (âDad! My Beano still hasnât arrived!â) has a limit of about 48 hours. I want to say to him: âTwo days? Try 35 years!â For that is how long the world has waited for Barry Windsor-Smithâs new graphic novel, Monsters. In an industry that has, for most of its history, been dominated by fast art and on-the-hoof storytelling, owing to the ferocious pace of weekly production, to call Monsters an outlier would be an understatement. The reason that anyone is prepared to wait that long for it is the 71-year-old behind it. Before Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Mark Millar, Dave McKean, Warren Ellis, Glenn Fabry, Steve Dillon, Grant Morrison, Dave Gibbons and all the other UK creators who have had a disproportionate impact on the US comic book scene, there was Windsor-Smith. He showed up fresh from art-school â more or less literally, to hear him tell it â on Marvel Comicsâs doorstep in 1968 and he has been, sometimes turbulently, in and out of the funny books ever since.