Twenty-five years ago Friday, my comic industry career began with my first day editing Comics Retailer magazine, the trade publication for the comics industry through the 1990s and 2000s. (It would later be known as Comics & Games Retailer, after the makeup of the readership changed.)
Today, I begin a new article series on the site: a monthly look back on that magazine and the comics market in those tumultuous times, starting with…what else? An origin story, discussing both the origins of the comics retail market, the demand for the magazine, publisher Krause Publications‘ intentions for it, and some of the issues facing the market in 1992, when the publication was launched.
This installment closes with my arrival in the CR offices in November 1993, and the challenges the market was facing at the time. The plan (at least roughly) is for a continuing series, hopefully monthly, looking back at individual months as the 1993 boom went bust.
Comichron founder John Jackson Miller has tracked the comics industry for more than 25 years, including a decade editing the industry’s retail trade magazine; he is the author of several guides to comics, as well as more than a hundred comic books for various franchises.
He is the author of novels including Star Wars: Kenobi, Star Wars: A New Dawn, Star Trek: Discovery – The Enterprise War, and his upcoming release, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – The High Country. Read more about them at his fiction site.
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