Isabelle "Barbara" Fiske Calhoun, who was an artist for Harvey Comics during World War II, and created work under her maiden name Barbara Hall, passed away Monday.  She was 94. No cause of death was released.
 
Calhoun was born in Tucson, Ariz., on Sept. 9, 1919.  After studying painting in Los Angeles, she moved to New York City in 1940, and showed her portfolio to Harvey Comics in 1941.  She was hired to draw Black Cat and later worked on Girl Commandos, a strip developed from Pat Parker, War Nurse about an all-female freedom fighting team.  The obituary provided by her family said she had to draw under the name B. Hall as cartooning was "a man's profession" at the time.
 
In 1946, she married writer and playwright Irving Fiske, and the couple use wedding money to buy a 140-acre farm in Rochester, Vermont that later became a commune for artists and writers.  She continued her art career as a painter.  She and Fiske had two children, Isabella (Ladybelle) and William.
 
In the 1960s, through Ladybelle, she met and befriended many well-known underground cartoonists including R. Crumb, Trina Robbins, Kim Deitch, and Spain Rodriguez among others.
 
Hall divorced Fiske in the 1970s, and after marrying Dr. Donald Calhoun in the 1990s, changed her name to Barbara Fiske Calhoun.  Calhoun died in 2009.
 
More information on Hall’s career is chronicled in Trina Robbin’s Pretty In Ink from Fantagraphics Books.