The Birth of Indie Comics Distribution

“Hey!! Kids Comics!” Throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, metal signs announcing funnybook availability sat atop wire spinner racks positioned in druggists, newsstands, grocery stores, and five & dime stores across the fruited plains. For better than a quarter-century, these racks were the only way that a young comic book fan could buy their preferred reading material. In the late 1970s, however, a change came to the long-stagnating comics business that shook up the standard practices of comics publishers and launch a revolution in the comics industry. Writer Stephen Friedt tells the story of these changes through the lens of one influential distributor and publisher with his recently-published TwoMorrows book, The Pacific Comics Companion.

The first step in the evolution of the industry came as writers and artists like Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Neal Adams, and others began creating comics that appealed more to teenagers and college students than to the traditional pre-pubescent market. To meet this need, specialized comic book shops began opening across the country. Providing product to these retailers, enterprising young hustlers launched wholesale distributors outside of the (reputedly) mob-dominated magazine distribution business, creating a “direct sales” comics market that still thrives today. One such plucky upstart was San Diego’s Pacific Comics.

Friedt’s The Pacific Comics Companion, written with editorial assistance from Eisner Award-winning comics historian Jon B. Cooke (editor of Comic Book Creator magazine), relates the rise and fall of the company that was at the forefront of the newly-emerging market. As Friedt writes, Pacific Comics was the brainchild of brothers Steve and Bill Schanes, who got their business started by selling used comics by mail order out of their mother’s house. As sales–and their inventory–grew by 1974, the two teenagers opened a retail store, the success of that first location rapidly growing into a multi-store chain in the San Diego area. They eventually expanded into distribution as a way to ensure new product for their four stores.

Pacific thrived as the direct-sales market continued to grow, largely because they stocked independent comics created specifically for these specialty dealers–titles like Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, Dave Sims’ Cerebus the Aardvark, and Wendy and Richard Pini’s Elfquest, among others–that you would never find on any newsstand. When a rival distributor, Capital City, began publishing its own B&W comic, Mike Baron and Steve Rude’s Nexus, the Schanes brothers decided that they could branch out into publishing themselves. They brought in their friend David Scroggy to handle editorial for the publishing side of the company.

The first title published by Pacific was by legendary comics writer and artist Jack Kirby, whose Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers appeared in late 1981, with thirteen bi-monthly issues written and drawn by Kirby published through 1984. It was considered quite a coup for the young publishing endeavor, as Kirby had retired from comics and was working in animation at the time. The Schanes brothers convinced the comics legend to sign up with the unproven company by offering complete creative control, full ownership of his copyrights, and royalties on sales – none of which Kirby ever enjoyed while working for DC or Marvel, and which were pro-creator innovations that would become part of Pacific’s legacy in the industry.

Anticipating first-issue sales of around 25,000 copies, Kirby’s Captain Victory #1 sold in excess of 70,000 copies and helped launch Pacific as a comics publisher. They would continue to work with Kirby through the years, also publishing his Silver Star series. Pacific quickly went all-in, their groundbreaking royalty and copyright system attracting comics professionals like Mike Grell (DC’s Warlord), who brought his Starslayer series to Pacific. Mad magazine artist Sergio Aragonés launched his long-running Groo the Wanderer series with Pacific, and comics legends like Neal Adams, Bernie Wrightson, Al Williamson, Jim Starlin, and Gray Morrow all had comics published by Pacific.

Writer and editor Bruce Jones worked as an independent “packager” for Pacific, putting together popular titles like Alien Worlds and Twisted Tales for the publisher, enlisting talents like Richard Corben, William Stout, and Frank Frazetta to create covers and stories for the two anthology series. Pacific also discovered a number of young talents, the most prominent being the late Dave Stevens. An aspiring artist, Stevens shopped at Pacific’s original comics shop. They asked him to contribute a short story to fill out an issue of Grell’s Starslayer, for which Stevens came up with his throwback character The Rocketeer. Stevens’ old-school pin-up art style made The Rocketeer a raging success, the character later appearing as a cover feature in the company’s Pacific Presents title.

Pacific expanded its line with colorized reprints of classic stories from Warren Publishing’s B&W magazines, but their other big home run was with the licensed property Elric, a fantasy character created by British fantasy author Michael Moorcock. Written by Marvel Comics veteran Roy Thomas (Conan) and illustrated by relative newcomers P. Craig Russell and Michael T. Gilbert, Pacific’s Elric titles–published with full-process color on improved paper stock–are landmarks in fantasy comics. But, by 1984, cracks had begun to form in Pacific’s business. With their distribution side stressed to the point of breaking by Marvel’s purposeful flooding of the market with high-priced reprint books (squeezing independent titles off dealers’ shelves) and with the publishing side saddled with debt (much of it owed to creators), Pacific closed down in late 1984.

Friedt provides depth and detail to the Pacific Comics story both through his own (and Cooke’s) research as well as extensive interviews with comics creators and Pacific’s principles. There’s a lot of material squeezed into the trade paperback’s pages, including mini-bios for several key comics creators, reproductions of cover artwork, character art (some of it previously unpublished), and vintage photographs, the pages crammed with colorful graphics. The Pacific Comics Companion also includes a comprehensive bibliography for the company, which published 109 issues of 36 different titles in a little more than three years.

It may seem that Pacific was a mere footnote in the decades-long history of the comics industry, but Friedt points out the company’s importance and innovations throughout the book. Pacific was the first publisher of its size to offer creators ownership of their copyrights and characters, and the first to pay royalties on sales above a certain level–both actions that forced the big boys to change their practices. Pacific returned original art to its creators long before Marvel and DC, and their experimentations in color processing, paper quality, and printing improved the look and artistic possibilities of the comics medium. Moreover, Pacific’s short-lived success and early support of the direct market opened the door for subsequent independent publishers like Dark Horse, Image Comics, and Fantagraphics to thrive and expand the vocabulary of mainstream comics.

The Pacific Comics Companion is the impressive story of a visionary company that, as Friedt smartly illustrates with his narrative, lost the battle but ultimately won the war, forcing changes within the industry that benefited both comics creators and readers alike, resulting in smarter and more entertaining comics altogether and helping create a multi-billion-dollar comics media industry. The book will appeal to any comics fan with a sense of history and will prompt readers to dig through the back issue bins to find hidden gems from the rich and varied Pacific Comics catalog.

(TwoMorrows Publishing, November 28, 2023)