Barry Blair passed away earlier this week. A very talented writer-and-artist, he was one of the founders of Aircel Comics with the backing of Ken Campbell. The imprint got its name from Campbell’s refrigeration company. Barry had a house stockpiled with a number of artists eager to create comics and they were all put to work churning out books for Aircel with titles like Elflord, Samurai and Warlock 5.

For a couple of years their books were very successful and featured work by Blair, Pat McEown, Dale Keown, Dave Cooper, Jim Somerville, Guang Yap and others during the black and white boom of the mid-1980s. When the market soured, Campbell was eager to shed the imprint. Rather than shut it down, he made a deal with Malibu Comics President Scott Rosenberg to take it over. Malibu was the parent company to Eternity Comics.

As part of the deal, Malibu would run the imprint and Barry would provide 4 books a month - a new book every Tuesday either by him or his studiomates or in some form of collaboration. In addition, Malibu would also sponsor Barry’s green card - he wanted to move out of Canada to New York City and found a place in the shadow of the United Nations building. For a couple of years, Malibu published a wide variety of Aircel books - Barry’s own adventure books, Dave Cooper’s wild parodies, and even a Jim Somerville zombie book.

To expand the imprint, Malibu’s editorial staff also acquired other non-Blair-related properties for Aircel, including Men In Black from creator Lowell Cunningham and artist Sandy Carruthers, and Cat & Mouse by Roland Mann and Mitch Byrd. Over time, Barry’s material became more adult in content with “adults only” books like Leather & Lace and Sapphire. They were wildly successful for the time, selling between 8,000 and 12,000 copies per issue, which didn’t include the additional 20% or so that sold via mail order. The arrangement with Barry ended after Malibu Comics merged with Bob Jacob’s Acme Interactive videogame company. By this time Barry was creatively antsy about doing other things and new co-President Bob was uncomfortable with the adult material.

Since all of Barry’s books were creator-owned, he was free and clear to take them elsewhere. We lost touch over the years, but he was fun to hang around with at CCI in San Diego and he had an easy laugh that was infectious. He loved his work, he loved drawing comics, and his mind was an endless resource of ideas waiting to spill out onto the paper.

[Artwork: The cover to an issue of Demon Hunter, one of Barry’s adventure books, © Barry Blair]