Barry Blair and Aircel Comics

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Independent,

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.

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COMIC CON INTERNATIONAL: Booth Babes and the Ultraverse

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials,

And here we go with the final installment of Old Comic Book Convention Photos week. I think everyone knows what a “Booth Babe” is – she’s the model-like girl at a convention who usually works in an exhibitor’s display area or prowls around in front of it, chatting with potential customers and repeating all the talking points she’s been given for the day. She might even be handing out product literature or free samples and you willingly take it because “Hey, a pretty girl is giving me stuff.” You could always find booth babes at car shows, boat shows, and consumer electronics shows like CES. The same types of places where Adam West might show up to lean against one of the original Batmobiles.

Back in the 1990s, there was an explosion of booth babes at comic book conventions, usually at a publisher’s booth. Sometimes they were actually on staff at the publishing company, sometimes not. Thanks to the explosion of Image Comics in the early 1990s, there was a tremendous increase in costumed characters as well – not the fans dressed in costume, but professional models, male and female, hired by the publisher to wear custom-made costumes based on characters in their books. They would hang around the booth or stroll around on the floor, mingling with the fans, driving traffic back to their booth and posing for “Hey! Look at me with a pretty girl at the convention!” photos with tubby fans in too-small X-Men t-shirts. Image had them, Harris Publications trotted out a couple of different Vampirellas, and other publishers jumped in.

Malibu Comics, always able to identify and then exploit a trend, had their own costumed characters with the launch of the Ultraverse in 1993.

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CHRIS ULM: The Ultraverse and Appy Entertainment

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Video Games,

Chris Ulm was the guy who came up with the idea of the Ultraverse. I should know - I watched him do it. When Bob Jacob merged his Acme Interactive with Malibu Comics and became co-president with Scott Rosenberg, he wanted some ideas about what Malibu could do in its post-Image Comics years. “And bring me steak, not sizzle!” he demanded like a little kid who wanted the biggest piece of birthday cake.

Ulm pitched a couple of ideas. One was “Hire Jim Shooter” (which the company almost did, 2 1/2 times over the years). The second was the idea that became the Ultraverse (though its working title was the Megaverse, until we discovered that it was already a trademarked universe). Ulm served as Editor-In-Chief of the Ultraverse and co-created Rune with Barry Windsor-Smith.

After Marvel bought Malibu Comics, Ulm and took a look at his employment agreement and realized he could do something else. He went north and jumped into video games at Oddworld Inhabitants (check out Abe’s Exoddus and Munch’s Oddysee!). After Oddworld, he went to work farther south and joined the game company Sammy which later spun off into his own High Moon Studios (where he worked on the Bourne franchise and created the Darkwatch vampire western video game). Last year, he stepped away from Sammy and with some of his Sammy pals, including one-time comic book writer Paul O’Connor, launched Appy Entertainment – a game company that makes applications, apps, for the iPhone.

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