I started my career in comics as a retailer. I was the owner/operator of Paper Hero Comics in Chino, California. I read articles about building your brand, and one of the recommendations was to write for trade journals. So I reached out to Don Thompson of the Comic Buyer’s Guide to become a freelancer. I wrote for both the Comic Buyer’s Guide and the Comic Retailer starting in March 1992. I covered stories about retailing to help promote my comics shop.
After a divorce Paper Hero Comics was sold and I stopped writing for a time. I subscribed to a comic news email service called Comics2000 on Yahoo. When they closed up shop, they offered the subscriber list to anyone interesting in taking over the project.
With the Comics2000 subscriber list, I launched Super Hero News on October 18, 1989. Super Hero News was an email list clipping service that allowed subscribers to post their own press releases and several websites allowed us to clip news from their site and distribute it to the subscribers via Yahoo. Sites included very young versions of Newsarama, CBR and Rich’s Ramblings ’98 and many more.
In April 2010 I put together a plan to run a comic news website called The Pulse after Jennifer Contino left. I discussed the plan with Steve Conley but ultimately passed on the offer from The Pulse. With the help of Phil Latter and Ric Croxton we started implementing the Pulse business plan and moved Super Hero News from a Yahoo list service to a full-service pop culture website.
With both Super Hero News and then First Comics News it has been a collaborative effort, from the first day to today, 20 years later. This is only possible because of the dedication and support of a large group of contributors who have been willing to share their love of this hobby with you, our readers. I thank them for their continued support and I thank you for reading your comic news here.
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