One of the new mainstay players in the emerging Direct Sales market comprised of comic book specialty stories in the 1980s was First Comics. An outfit out of Chicago, First boasted an initial eclectic line-up but slowly and surely crystalized into a reliable player in the field. Debuting in 1982, among the series First published … Continue reading FSC: E-MAN #2
As the Direct Sales marketplace of comic book specialty shops became a larger and larger part of the marketplace in the 1980s, any number of new young publishers threw their hats into the ring. This led to a bevy of new companies putting forward their own efforts in an attempt to find fame and fortune. … Continue reading FSC: THE CRUSADERS #1
In 1982, the comic book marketplace was expanding. The Direct Sales network of comic book specialty shops had proven itself as a viable alternative to mainstream newsstand distribution, and so suddenly all sort of publishers were jumping into this new market with a variety of releases, some more polished than others. It was an exciting … Continue reading FSC: DREADSTAR #1
In 1982, I was still ordering my comics through the mail order service offered by Geppi's Comic World in Maryland. I didn't yet have a driver's license, and my family's new homestead was in a new development that was too far away from any center of civilization to get to easily by walking or bike-riding. … Continue reading FSC: MARVEL AGE #1
BRAVE AND THE BOLD had almost run its course at the point when this issue first came out. It was something of a holdover of a rapidly-diminishing era, one in which comic books were largely an impulse purchase by entertainment-hungry buyers. In those days, team-up titles typically did well, giving a reader two characters for … Continue reading FSC: BRAVE AND THE BOLD #197
At the beginning of the 1980s, after a number of rough years, DC really began to get its act together and to modernize its approach to doing comic books. The primary instigator of this change was new publisher Jenette Kahn and the vehicle through which it became viable was the emerging Direct Sales marketplace of … Continue reading FSC: OMEGA MEN #1
By 1980, I started to attend comic book conventions in New York City. My father would take myself and occasionally a comic book reading friend or two on the Long Island Railroad into New York City and give us a couple of hours inside one of the cons that were going on there. These were … Continue reading FSC: COMICO PRIMER #1
ELFQUEST was one of the seminal self-publisher titles in the very early Direct Sales market place of the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was a very personal fantasy series conceived and created by artist Wendy Pini with input from her husband Richard Pini, who also ran the business end of their operation, WaRP (Wendy … Continue reading FSC: ELFQUEST #1
In the early 1980s, Frank Miller had a transformative run on DAREDEVIL. Starting out as only the book's penciler, he began to shift it in tone, moving it away from the ersatz Spider-Man clone it had been towards something with a bit more of a noir sensibility to it. This process accelerated when he took … Continue reading FSC: DAREDEVIL #192
By 1982, Marvel had been making inroads into establishing itself as a children's book publisher as much as a periodical comic book publisher. This was apparently Marvel president Jim Galton's plan for where the future of the organization should lie. He had no idea how the emerging Direct Sales marketplace was going to explode, nor … Continue reading FSC: X-MEN MARVEL ILLUSTRATED Paperback
The Tom Brevoort Experience 