Linda Lessmann and Barry Smith

When the young Barry Smith, 

walked away from his burgeoning comic book career 

in the mid-Seventies and 

set up shop as, 

The Gorblimey Press,

his partner in crime, was his girlfriend 

Linda Lessmann 

who was a colourist and had also worked for Marvel Comics.

Linda, as she looked in the Mid-Seventies.

Barry's art was the engine that drove the business but Linda was the person who made it all work, by doing everything else that needed to be done and allowing Barry to concentrate on making art.

The face of the angel, in this Christmas Card illustration, drawn by Barry Smith in 1977, does seem to have been modelled on the young and beautiful, Miss Lessmann.

The relationship with Barry Windsor-Smith (as he became known) faltered and failed, after eleven years 

and Linda moved on with her life.

The Mid-Eighties found her working for the 

young upstarts at First Comics 

and there she met Bill Reinhold, a penciller, 

who was also doing work for First Comics.

They married in 1987 and are still together, to this day.

Interestingly, their children, a boy and a girl, are both musicians who perform on stage, with their respective bands.

Nostalgia runs deep and for me and many like me, the founding of The Gorblimey Press 

and the prints that they released 

was a defining moment.

I would like to thank Barry and Linda for making my teenaged years brighter and for all the enjoyment that I got from looking at those amazing images.

I couldn't afford them, when they were published but I have been fortunate enough to gather up a number of them, over the intervening forty odd years and they are very coveted possessions 

to this day.

I have a framed and signed, although the ball-point ink has faded on the signature, print of 

Pandora (1975) 

and it has pride of place, on the wall of my studio.

It had not occurred to me before but it is highly possible that the figure of Pandora was modelled on the young 

Linda Lessmann too!

Linda Lessmann & Diane Pitre Stevens

at the New York Comic Con of 1976

Judging by her chin, in the photograph and the chin Barry gave to Pandora, I would say that it is a given, that Linda is the model.