Comico

Comico began in 1982 in Norristown, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, founded by Gerry Giovinco and Bill Cucinotta. It grew quickly into one of the more serious independents of the direct-market boom, building a reputation -- under editor-in-chief Diana Schutz -- for treating both licensed material and creator-owned work with real editorial care.

Its licensed line included a continuation of Jonny Quest written by the cartoon's own co-creator, Doug Wildey, and adaptations of Robotech. Its creator-owned side produced two of the decade's most influential independent books: Matt Wagner's Mage: The Hero Discovered, and Grendel, which first appeared in Comico Primer #2 in 1982 and ran as a back-up feature in Mage before becoming its own series. Bill Willingham's Elementals and a revived Justice Machine rounded out a line built on giving cartoonists room to do ambitious work outside the two majors.

The run those books supported didn't last. As Mage, Grendel and the Robotech line wound down through the late 1980s, the revenue that had carried the company went with them, and by 1989 Comico had cancelled roughly half its titles. It filed for bankruptcy in 1990; the liquidation triggered a dispute over the Grendel rights that Matt Wagner won, regaining the character outright, while Justice Machine and The Maze Agency were picked up by Innovation Comics. New owner Andrew Rev cleared out the original staff and kept the name alive on a reduced, sporadic publishing schedule into 1997.