Back Issue!

• 1. Introduction

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  Back Issue! is an American magazine that exists for one specific reason: to keep the comics of the 1970s and beyond from being forgotten. Published eight times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing out of Raleigh, North Carolina, it arrived in 2003 to fill a gap that had opened up in the world of comics journalism. What gap? Who created it? And how does a magazine devoted to back issues of comic books earn one of the industry's most prestigious awards?

• 2. A Gap Left Behind

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  Jon B. Cooke had been editing Comic Book Artist at TwoMorrows when, in 2002, he took the title away from that publisher and moved it to a different house. TwoMorrows was left without one of its signature periodicals. The company's response was to launch something new in 2003. Michael Eury, a former comics writer and editor himself, stepped in to run the replacement. His background in the industry shaped what Back Issue! would become: not a news magazine chasing the latest release, but a deep-read publication focused on the era spanning the 1970s to the present.

• 3. The Writers Who Built It

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  Mark Arnold, Michael Aushenker, Glenn Greenberg, George Khoury, Andy Mangels, and Richard A. Scott are among the writers who have contributed to the magazine's pages. That roster signals something about how Back Issue! operates. It draws on people who know comics history from the inside, bringing scholarship and familiarity to subjects that general-interest publications rarely cover in depth. The result is a publication that functions less like a newsstand magazine and more like a reference library issued in installments.

• 4. Eisner Recognition

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  In 2019, the Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism went to two publications at once. Back Issue! shared that honor with PanelxPanel. The Eisner Awards are widely regarded as the most prominent recognition in the American comics industry, and the shared win placed Back Issue! in company with a very different kind of magazine, one aimed at a different audience and format. That the award committee recognized both in the same year points to how varied comics journalism had become by 2019, and how durable a niche Back Issue! had carved out over sixteen years of continuous publication.