Over at the site for Multiversity Comics, Drew Bradley has a short article about how Groo the Wanderer went from being an independent comic book not sold on newsstands to being a Marvel comic sold on newsstands. This was back at a time when that was a severe handicap to the sales of any comic book to only be in the Direct Market ("D.M."), which is no longer the case. Anyway, Mr. Bradley writes…
Over the next few years, Pacific found itself in progressively deeper financial trouble. Their struggles were known through the industry, opening the door for other publishers to woo their talent. Marvel's response to the rapid growth of the DM was to create their Epic Comics imprint, which was an effort to combine independent publisher flexibility with the benefits of big publisher infrastructure.
With the promise of newsstand sales, Epic editor Archie Goodwin persuaded Aragonés to move Groo away from Pacific. This was the first time a DM-exclusive property moved to the newsstands, a rare reversal of the prevailing practice at the time. Groo remained with Marvel for ten years and 120 issues.
That's close but not exact. What persuaded us to leave Pacific was the near-certainty that Pacific wouldn't be able to publish Groo (or anything else) for very much longer. It was not that we wanted to leave Pacific. It was that Pacific was leaving us…and everyone.
And the main person who persuaded us that Marvel was the place to go was not Archie Goodwin. It was a wonderful lady named Carol Kalish, who was Direct Sales Manager and Vice President of New Product Development at Marvel Comics from 1981 to 1991. Carol was very instrumental in developing that new means of distributing comic books when the old method was dying out. She was a true lover of comics and one of the smartest people I knew in the business. Here's what she looked like…
And here's how the move came about. I was friends with Carol but even better friends with her life-partner, artist Richard Howell. One evening when Richard and I were on the phone together — me out here, the two of them back in New Jersey — I asked him to put Carol on the line for a minute. I told her Pacific Comics was not long for this world. She agreed and said, "I want to find a way to get Groo to Marvel." And she did.
I don't want to suggest that Archie Goodwin had nothing to do with it. Archie was a guy we and everyone trusted and he had a lot to do with making us feel welcome, as did Jim Shooter, who was then editor-in-chief (I think that was his title) back then. But Carol deserves the most credit for engineering that peaceful transfer of power.
Archie was the first in a very long list of people in the comic book industry to have the dubious title of being editor of Groo. At Pacific Comics and with one issue we did with Eclipse, no one had that title. I'm not kidding. Sergio and I just produced the comic book, sent it in and said, "Here…send this to the printer" and they did. Someone might give it an unnecessary proofread on their end and/or do mechanical work to prep it for the printer but no one was the editor of Groo.
Gary Grossmann, who is the Official Historian of Groo (a much coveted honor) informs me that there have been 25 different people listed in the credits of Groo comics credits with a title containing some form of the word, "editor." These titles include editor, associate editor, assistant editor, editor-in-chief, editorial director, consulting editor, and executive editor. Amazingly, a few of these people are still in the industry. (And also according to Gary: When the fourth issue of the next four-issue Groo mini-series comes out later this year, it will be the 200th Groo publication — 196 regular comics, 2 specials, and 2 graphic novels. So that'll be eight issues for each person with "editor" in their job title.)
Archie once told me he never read an issue of Groo until it was on its way to the printer or perhaps already printed. When you serve your stint as editor of Groo — and don't worry, we'll get around to everyone eventually — just do what Archie did.
Getting back to Carol: She was an amazing individual. One night when she was in L.A. on business, we had dinner and then I asked her a small favor. Within walking distance of my home, there was a small, floundering comic book store that I occasionally visited. The fellow who'd opened it was a devout lover of comics and he'd sunk every cent he had into this place and was on the verge of losing every cent he had. Just loving comics does not mean you have the skills and knowledge necessary to sell them.
I asked Carol if we could stop by his store to perhaps give him a little advice. She instantly agreed and we were there for well over an hour with her explaining to him how to sell comics. The lesson was not how to sell the comics of her employer, Marvel, but how to sell all comics…and she even touched on why he should not sell only Marvels. If the fellow had followed all her advice, I'll bet he'd have made a go of the place. As it was, he applied about a third of what she taught him and his sales went up somewhat…and then he had a heart attack and died. His wife sold the shop and the laundromat next door expanded into what had been his space.
But the point was she took the time. She always took the time…and we didn't know it but she didn't have that much left. A few years later, she died from a pulmonary embolism. She was 36 and some of us are still getting over that shock. Helping Groo survive the demise of Pacific was one of her minor accomplishments but mentioning it here gives me a chance to tell you about her super-heroics and I didn't want to pass up that opportunity.