FRONT COVER / ISSUE ONE / FIRST PRINT
BACK COVER / ISSUE ONE / FIRST PRINT
FRONT COVER / ISSUE TWO / FIRST PRINT
BACK COVER / ISSUE TWO / FIRST PRINT
FRONT COVER / ISSUE ONE / SECOND PRINT (And no, that is not a distortion; the trim job was that bad. It's a factory original.)
BACK COVER / ISSUE ONE / SECOND PRINT (They re-colored the original cover to #1 and put it on the back of the 2nd print.)
FRONT COVER / ISSUE TWO / SECOND PRINT
BACK COVER / ISSUE TWO / SECOND PRINT (Again they tweak the colors a bit on the original cover and put it on the back.)
INSIDE FRONT COVER / ISSUE TWO / FIRST PRINT (I like how "fandom" this looks.)
INSIDE FRONT COVER / ISSUE TWO / SECOND PRINT Remember Samurai by Barry Blair? You don't? OK, 1986. Black and White indy comic from Aircel. Before manga was widely available in the States, this is what we got: a filtered, domestic re-interpretation of some distant, mysterious craft. Kinda cool. I like to think about how language changes. How one adopts other forms of communication. Or how one language adopts another.
Anyhow, I stumbled across these gems of the era. I found the first and second printings of the first two issues. Four separate comics in all.
Scroll through the above and watch how the language of the comic changes with the reprints; how the "local dialect" of the images gets replaced with a more specific iconography.
The original back covers of issues one and two are the most "colloquial" of all the images. And they disappear first. Interesting. What am I trying to get at? I'm not sure. But it's a trend that I notice when looking at the "black and white explosion" indy comics from '86 to '88. The stuff that holds up, to me, sometimes reads like some gang slang. Kinda cool. I'm not trying to convince anyone that these "throwaway" comics are actually any good. I just really like them for the airbrushed tones - real airbrush, none of this Photoshop airbrush crap. Over and out. Oh wait, one last thing. When Barry Blair died a couple years ago, I thought there would be some obit that would explain Aircel Comics and Blair's career in detail. And then no real substantial obit appeared. Maybe I just missed it. All I know was that Blair died of a brain aneurysm. So I emailed my Canadian friends and asked around. No one really knew anything. It kinda seemed like no one wanted to talk about Blair. No one was saying they weren't talking. But really, no one was talking. Meanwhile, I found practically all the Aircel comics ever published. They were all stashed in the ten for a dollar box at a warehouse in Pittsburgh, PA. I bought like over a hundred comics. All Aircel. The sheer volume of titles published by this small Canadian organization was astonishing. Anyone remember Guang Yap? He started out at Aircel and went on to draw at Marvel. Love me some Dragonring. There were so many titles - so much to look at. And cheap! I doubt any of it is future Art Out of Time material but it is interesting. Even if only for historical reasons. And airbrush coloring.
Dragon Ring was my favorite comic when I was fourteen. I also loved Warlock 5, Stark Future, and Maelstrom. If you love airbrush work then you have to read Warlock 5 (if you haven't yet).
ReplyDeleteNot only did Aircel publish a lot of titles, Patrick McEown and Dave Cooper both started at there. And I was under the impression that Cooper's Dan and Larry was based on his relationship with Blair. Someone needs to do a retrospective article about the company.
And a question I've had for decades: how do you actually pronounce "Aircel"? Hard "c" or soft?
Wow, I didn't even know that Barry Blair had died! He and his team produced a bucketload of comics during their time. I checked out quite a few over the years. A lot of crap, a lot of talent, sometimes on the same books! I liked the energy of that era and think we need more of it in comics these days.
ReplyDeleteI remember publishing an obit but don't have any more details about his death, family, etc. I have also heard that Dan and Larry is based on Blair and Cooper.
ReplyDeletehttp://sequential.spiltink.org/2010/01/barry-blair-1959-2010.html
Aircel - the best insulation company-turned-comics company to ever come out of Ottawa, my hometown!
ReplyDeletewell I think people don't talk much about barry blair because if you visit his website your internet service provider may report you to the FBI.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure there was a signing by some Aircel folks at my local store in White Plains, NY back in the day. I think I might even have some Dale Keown sketch of one of the characters from that signing. Samurai?
ReplyDelete