First

First Comics started in Evanston, Illinois in 1983, in the stretch when the direct market had grown large enough to support a publisher that was neither Marvel nor DC but had not yet been flooded with them.

Its line was built on creator-driven series with a harder edge than the mainstream was printing: Howard Chaykin's American Flagg!, Mike Baron and Steve Rude's Nexus, Grimjack, Jon Sable and Badger. It also serialised Lone Wolf and Cub in English with Frank Miller covers, years before manga had any reliable American audience, and did as much as anything of the period to create one.

The company closed in 1991. The name has been used again since by unrelated ventures, which is why the catalogue's date range for it runs later than the company's own.