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Photo: Ron Barlow & Bernie Wrightson c. 1974 |
by Joel Pollack
R.I.P. Ron Barlow (1949-2022).
Ron commissioned and published Bernie Wrightson's Badtime Stories, the first deluxe comic fanzine devoted to a single artist.
Ron worked as an editor at Woody Gelman's Nostalgia Press, where he edited hardcover reprints of classic comic strips including the finest Alex Raymond Flash Gordon strips. It was at Nostalgia Press that Ron edited EC: Horror Comics of the 1950s.
Ron and his partner, Bruce Hershenson, published the earliest full-color EC reprints, under the East Coast Comix imprint.
In 1972 , Ron and Bruce staged the first and only EC Comics convention, attended by most of the EC staff. For that convention, they published EC Lives, a collection of articles about EC Comics written by EC creators.
Ron was active in Star Trek fandom, and owned and operated the Federation Trading Post in Manhattan c. 1973.
Joel's contacted other friends of Barlow's on Facebook for their reminiscences. Here's Bruce Hershenson's:
RIP Ron Barlow
January 1, 1949 - August 9, 2022
When I was 15 I
spent four days over the 1968 July 4th weekend buying and
selling comic books. Not so strange nowadays, but beyond
bizarre back then. I left my home with 6 boxes of comic
books and $20, and after 4 frantic days of wheeling and
dealing I went home with 20 boxes of comics and $100, and I
knew I had found my life's calling!
I also met two 18
year olds who would have a massive impact on my life. One
was a Californian named Barry Bauman (a story for another
day), and the other was from Baltimore, named Ron Barlow,
and both were very good looking guys with very long hair
(well before that was mainstream) and for the life of me I
could not see what either of them saw in me, but their
friendships sure helped this pathetically nerdy and shy 15
year old immeasurably!
Flash forward to
the end of 1971. I was in college and hating it, and
spending most of my time buying and selling comics,
completely supporting myself doing so. It was at this point
Ron Barlow re-entered my life in a big way. He had gone to
work for Woody Gelman, the visionary who first saw a market
for deluxe hardcover reprints of classic comic books.
One of those books
was devoted to EC Comics, and through editing it, Ron caught
the eye of Bill Gaines, and they became great friends,
despite being decades apart in age. Ron had grown up with
Berni Wrightson and Jeff Jones, and he had the idea of a new
publication that would be a tribute to EC Comics, but with
all new stories by modern artists, and instead of a lowly
comic book, a "graphic novel," printed on the finest paper.
Ron was able to
persuade Berni to draw one entire book called "Badtime
Stories", and he gave him an astronomical page rate, AND
returned the art, something never done in those days! I came
into the picture in early 1972, because Ron and I were both
living in Great Neck, New York, and thanks to my successful
mail-order business in comics, I had put together some
savings from it, even though I was now only 18.
Ron had run out of
money, and he proposed that I put up the printing bill, and
that I handle the distribution of the book, and that once we
each got our investment back, we would split whatever
profits that were made 50/50.
I agreed, because I
felt then that Berni was the young artist who most could
have been an EC artist had he been 20 years older, and I
thought his work on Badtime Stories was especially
wonderful. So that's how I became the 18 year old
"publisher" of Badtime Stories, and what started my longtime
partnership with Ron Barlow.
It took a lot of
blood, sweat, and tears, but I got us all the money back on
Badtime Stories, and Ron told me he admired my business
acumen and wanted us to together organize a convention
solely for fans of EC Comics, a "theme" convention no one
had done before.
I had zero
knowledge about running a convention (although I had
attended many), but it sounded like "fun", so I agreed. I
was now 19, and Ron was 23, and somehow we were able to rent
the giant McAlpin Hotel in New York City for four days (with
no money!).
What made the
convention a major success (except we made no money, but
that was not important to us) was that Bill Gaines was able
to convince just about every EC artist and writer to attend,
and there has never been another convention like it. Ron
next suggested we approach Bill with the "crazy" idea of
reprinting the original EC comics as full-color comic books
(the very first time fans ever did that for ANY comic book
company), and to our amazement Bill agreed!
That led to my
dropping out of college, and Ron and I co-publishing 12
issues of full-color reprints of EC comics over the next two
years, under our "East Coast Comix" label (we were given the
catchy name by longtime Ron friend, Joel Pollack!). Sadly,
there just weren't enough comic book collectors back them to
fully support the project, and we folded it after 12
glorious issues!
After that I was
partners with Ron in a vintage clothing business in
Baltimore. He discovered the Internet in the late 1980s and
wanted us to move our business online, but it sounded
"sketchy" to me, and I talked him out of it, to my eternal
regret, because WE might have become early Internet moguls,
bringing collectibles to the Net, as eBay did years later!
Ron had also
discovered vintage movie posters, and he wanted to do a mail
order business of those as well as the vintage clothing. But
as so often happened with Ron, he grew tired of the posters,
and offered to trade me his half of that poster business for
my half of his vintage clothing store and I reluctantly
agreed.
But I took that
tiny poster business and it evolved into my current
business, eMoviePoster.com, with $107
million in total sales, so in a way I owe that success to
Ron Barlow as well!
In the late 1980s
Ron moved to Santa Fe and started selling antiquities, with
a very successful gallery there. He later moved back to
Baltimore (where he started out) and pursued a career as a
painter, something I wish he had more vigorously pursued far
earlier.
Ron was the most
gifted, talented, and "ahead of his time" person I have ever
met! I have just barely scratched the surface of the many
business ideas he had over the years. He launched a free
"adzine" for comic book collectors, years before The Buyer's
Guide copied his idea. He owned a store entirely devoted to
Star Trek memorabilia, in the days when it was a cult
favorite, but long before it became a beloved franchise.
Ron was incredible
at "spotting talent" and upcoming "trends". It was he who
told me in 1976 about the forthcoming Star Wars movie, and
he told me it was sure to be a giant hit, and that he had
been able to buy the rights to some merchandising, with the
little money he had, and he had a real "score" from that.
There was so much
more to Ron's incredible life! If only he had been able to
stay focused longer on each individual project, he likely
would be a household name today, but that was just not his
way. Once a project took fruit, his mind was on to his next
idea!
So rest in peace my
old friend. You surely have earned some time off. But
knowing Ron, I bet he is at St. Peter's shoulder, giving him
endless ideas on how Heaven could be run better!
