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There's an interesting article on the San Diego Reader website that details the rise and eventual downfall of Pacific Comics, one of the earliest direct market distributers and one of the earliest independent comic publishers.
Favorite quote:
Quote:
Employees tried to scavenge as much cool stuff as we could from the trash bins, but then Steve Schanes caught some San Diego comic-shop owners loading up their cars with Dumpster treasure intended for resale. He became so upset that he grabbed a hose, climbed onto the Dumpster, and turned it on, hosing down the Pacific throwaways until the bin was a pulp-filled swimming pool. That was the only time I ever heard Steve use the F-word, and he used it a lot, standing atop the soaking refuse of his once-thriving corporation: "Fucking vultures wanna make fucking money off my fucking dead hide, well, fuck them, I'll fucking teach 'em..."
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devil-lovin' Bat-Man 15000+ posts
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Steve Schanes... he took it all too far.
But, boy, could he play guitar.
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Quote:
Not all former Pacific employees fared so well. One secretary turned up working at a College Grove nudie nightclub, Jolar, where women in "private show booths" masturbated behind a glass partition for dollar tips. I know this because managing Jolar was my first post-Pacific job, and it was strange to now be a pimp for my former coworker (I can say this for her -- of all our girls, she had the biggest tips).
Ouch. There are some great anecdotes in that article. The one with Neil Adams smoking pot is a particular favorite.
I own Pacific Comics Presents #2. I always thought Missing Man would have made for a great Vertigo character, like the revamp of Shade the Changing Man.
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I actually read the entire article. I'm very proud of myself.
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Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
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Quote:
One afternoon during this period while visiting the office, Adams agreed to step out to the railroad tracks behind the warehouse with several staffers to get high. After the five of us passed around a hastily rolled joint, Adams pulled out a candlestick-sized metal box from his pants pocket and removed his own superdoobie, a joint of heroic proportions, in keeping with the larger-than-life four-color heroes he illustrated. The thing was like a roll of tarpaper with an ash on the end. You practically needed fireplace tongs for the roach clip. After eschewing oxygen for the ten minutes it took to toast the monster joint, we all stumbled back into the building, squinting and giggling and reeking like Tommy Chong's beard. To my amazement, Adams made at least four more trips to the tracks that afternoon, though only one staffer to my knowledge managed to accompany him every time and apparently keep up with his prodigious intake. I was so zoned I could barely tell Robotech from Battletech from Star Trek. I now understood why there was a full year between issues #1 and #2 of Ms Mystic
That explains a lot about Adams over the years...from inability to meet deadlines to some of the crazy stuff he's said in print.
And to think, all these years, he blamed his low output on doing "more lucrative advertising gigs." 
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Damn. Another illusion shattered.  Anyway, I was too lazy to read the whole thing, so I had my computer read it out loud to me. Quite a fascinating article. I remember seeing a few Pacific Comics back in the early '80s, though the only ones that looked interesting to my ten-year-old self were WILD ANIMALS #1 and, of course, GROO THE WANDERER. Bruce Jones' horror comics were just too damn scary for me then. Looking at all the great books from that time, it's a shame Pacific didn't last -- it seems like they ran some poor business practices and ended up getting screwed over by people as well.
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Quote:
The Time Trust said:
Anyway, I was too lazy to read the whole thing, so I had my computer read it out loud to me.
You can do that?
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He has a, ehem, special relationship with his computer.
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Regenerated 15000+ posts
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Hey, I treat Tina right, and she treats me right.
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Quote:
Disco Steve said:
Quote:
The Time Trust said:
Anyway, I was too lazy to read the whole thing, so I had my computer read it out loud to me.
You can do that?
http://www.readplease.com/
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Your death will make me king! 15000+ posts
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Quote:
Fused said:
RM552 sighting!!!
LIAR!!
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brutally Kamphausened 15000+ posts
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Thanks for posting the article, R.M. 552 !
Very interesting, and also very funny at many points in the article.
I was especially amused by Jay Allan Sanford's personal accounts of his employment with Pacific Comics, the wonders he saw come in every week, bizarre encounters with creators like Robert Crumb and Neal Adams, and the uneasiness of having a job you regarded as absolute Camelot of a work environment, and watching it crumble before you, wondering when the breaking point would come, where you either quit, or are pre-emptively laid off.
I've said often and across many topics that Pacific Comics is, to date, my favorite publisher in my 30-plus years of collecting comics, in terms of innovation, format, diversity and overall beauty of the books they produced, in their brief four years of comics publishing.
Here's a complete list of Pacific titles (aside from other imprints mentioned in the article), and the series that were either continued or published posthumously by Eclipse( in blue ) after Pacific's death in August 1984,
or continued by other publishers ( in red ).
Quote:
ALIEN WORLDS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
ALIEN WORLDS 3-D 1
ALIEN WORLDS ( Eclipse Graphic Novel 22, 5/1988)
BERNI WRIGHTSON:MASTER OF THE MACABRE 1 2 3 4 5
BOLD ADVENTURE 1 2 3
CAPTAIN VICTORY 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
CAPTAIN VICTORY SPECIAL 1
CORBEN SPECIAL (FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER ) 1
DARKLON THE MYSTIC 1
DEMON DREAMS 1 2
ECHO OF FUTUREPAST 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
(advertised as a Pacific title, but published by Continuity after Pacific folded)
EDGE OF CHAOS 1 2 3
ELRIC 1 2 3 4 5 6
FIRST FOLIO 1
GROO THE WANDERER 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
GROO SPECIAL 1
Image Illustrated:SEVEN SAMUROID ( Pacific Graphic Novel, 1984 )
JERRY IGER'S FAMOUS FEATURES (FLAMINGO ) 1
MS MYSTIC 1 2 ( later reprinted and continued by Continuity in a new series )
PACIFIC PRESENTS 1 2 3 4
PATHWAYS TO FANTASY 1
RAVENS AND RAINBOWS 1
ROCKETEER SPECIAL EDITION 1 (would have been PACIFIC PRESENTS 5)
ROCKETEER GRAPHIC NOVEL ( Eclipse Graphic Novel 7, 5/1985 )
ROG 2000 #1
SIEGEL AND SCHUSTER: DATELINE 1930's 1 2
SILVER STAR 1 2 3 4 5 6
SILVERHEELS 1 2 3
SILVERHEELS ( Eclipse Graphic Novel 12, 1987)
SKATEMAN 1
SOMERSET HOLMES 1 2 3 4 5 6
SOMERSET HOLMES ( Eclipse Graphic Novel 10, 1986 )
STARSLAYER 1 2 3 4 5 6 ( issues 7-34 published by First Comics )
STRANGE DAYS 1 2 3
SUNRUNNERS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
THRILLOGY 1
TWISTED TALES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
TWISTED TALES ( Eclipse Graphic Novel 15, 11/1987 )
VANGUARD ILLUSTRATED 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
VANITY 1 2
WILD ANIMALS 1
My favorites include:
- ALIEN WORLDS 1-9, and 3-D SPECIAL
.
- BERNI WRIGHTSON: MASTER OF THE MACABRE 1-3 (some of the finest pages in comic art history. Collected from 70's B&W issues of the Warren magazines, printed in color here for the first time, colors by Steve Oliff.)
.
- CORBEN SPECIAL 1, a Richard Corben adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher.
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- DEMON DREAMS 1 and 2 (Arthur Suydam, collecting stories Suydam did for HEAVY METAL, beautifully illustrated and colored.)
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- ECHO OF FUTUREPAST 1-9 (great Adams, Golden and Suydam art)
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- ELRIC (Roy Thomas, P.C.Russell pencils, Michael T. Gilbert inks)
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- GROO (although these Pacific issues are newstand printing, and look much better reprinted in Marvel/Epic's GROO CHRONICLES six-issue series)
.
- JERRY IGER'S FAMOUS FEATURES ( Flamingo, by Matt Baker)
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- PACIFIC PRESENTS (Dave Stevens, and Tim Conrad stories)
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- PATHWAYS TO FANTASY 1 (the Windsor-Smith cover alone is worth the price of the book)
.
- SILVERHEELS (The 3-issue series, while having beautiful portfolios of Hampton and Steacy, don't form a complete story that reaches a conclusion.
The SILVERHEELS graphic novel reprints the first three issues, and provides a 20 page conclusion.
Truly, comic book fine art !! )
.
- SOMERSET HOLMES 1-6 ( Good for both the Jones/Brent Anderson lead feature, as well as the "Cliffhanger" backup series by Jones/Williamson.)
.
- STARSLAYER (I love Grell's art, and was a huge WARLORD fan for 50 issues when it was coming out. Grell did the first six issues.)
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- STRANGE DAYS ( a great Road Warrior/Mad Max type series, by Milligan/McCarthy)
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- THRILLOGY (three short stories, by Tim Conrad)
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- TWISTED TALES (along with ALIEN WORLDS, both great E.C. tribute books, by many talented artists, including Williamson, Conrad, Corben, Wrightson, Bolton, Brunner, Liberatore, Perez, Steacy, Stevens, Hampton, and many others.)
Although it's hard to list any I didn't like. Even the Kirby stuff, though not Kirby's best, was fun. If you like Kirby's late 70's stuff, CAPTAIN VICTORY isn't such a huge leap. It's a fun 1950's-style alien-invasion type series.
   
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Here's an updated link to Jay Allen Sanford's Inside Story of Pacific Comics article. Still love that part about Steve Schanes: Most everyone at Pacific spent the final few days reading comics and trying to look busy and making deals with the Schaneses to purchase this or that. Tons of stuff was thrown out. Anything slightly defective or overstocked was tossed into Dumpster bins behind the warehouse -- art prints, portfolios, comics, magazines, posters, back issues, toys, even production-related stuff like photocopies of uninked artwork, cover photostats, and advertising slicks (some of which is reproduced in this blog).
Employees tried to scavenge as much cool stuff as we could from the trash bins, but then Steve Schanes caught some San Diego comic-shop owners loading up their cars with Dumpster treasure intended for resale. He became so upset that he grabbed a hose, climbed onto the Dumpster, and turned it on, hosing down the Pacific throwaways until the bin was a pulp-filled swimming pool.
That was the only time I ever heard Steve use the F-word, and he used it a lot, standing atop the soaking refuse of his once-thriving corporation: "F-ing vultures wanna make f-ing money off my f-ing dead hide, well, f-them, I'll -ing teach 'em..."
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