Comics Buyer's Guide

• 1. Introduction

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  Comics Buyer's Guide holds the record as the longest-running English-language periodical ever devoted to the American comic book industry. Alan Light founded it in February 1971 under the name The Buyer's Guide for Comic Fandom. Light was a 17-year-old collector living in the Quad Cities region. His goal was practical: give fans a place to post classified ads and find comics to buy or sell. A fanzine built almost entirely around advertisements had a name in that world. It was called an adzine, and that is what Light produced.

  The publication outlived Light's own editorship by three decades and passed through two corporate owners before printing its final page. How did a handmade ad sheet become an award-winning institution? What drew writers and artists to a publication founded on commerce? And what ultimately brought it down?

  Today a complete run of every issue is held by the Michigan State University Comic Art Collection.

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• 2. The Adzine Tradition

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  Ron Frantz, in his book Fandom: Confidential, traced Light's newsletter back to a pioneering adzine called Stan's Weekly Express, or WE. WE ran from 1969 to 1973. Its bare-bones approach, Frantz noted, was itself inspired by what he described as an "obscure journal of flower advertising known as Joe's Bulletin." Light also cooperated with WE's Seal of Approval program, which vendors could display to help reassure buyers and fight mail fraud. For a publication built almost entirely on transactions between strangers, that credential mattered.

  Frantz also documented what he called the "infamous long-running feud" between Light and Gary Groth, the founder of the Comics Journal. The two figures occupied the same small world of comics publishing for years.

  What changed the publication from a marketplace into something closer to a community began in 1972.

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• 3. Columns and Community

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  Issue #19, published on the 15th of August, 1972, carried the debut of "Beautiful Balloons," a monthly column by Don and Maggie Thompson. The Thompsons were prominent figures in comics fandom, and their column gave the publication a voice beyond classifieds. Murray Bishoff followed with a news column called "What Now?" beginning with issue #26 on the 1st of December, 1972. These additions carried practical weight beyond their editorial value. The United States Postal Service required genuine editorial content for a publication to qualify for second-class mailing rates. Paid subscriptions began with issue #27, dated the 1st of January, 1973. At that point, circulation stood at roughly 3,600 copies.

  Martin L. Greim, publisher of the fanzine The Comic Crusader, began contributing with issue #25 in November 1972. His column was initially titled "M. L. G. on Comics" and later became known as "Crusader Comments." Shel Dorf launched a series called "Shel Dorf and the Fantasy Makers" with issue #162 in 1976, interviewing creators across comics, television, and film. Robert Ingersoll's column "The Law is A Ass!" examined how comics writers got the law wrong and what they should have done instead. It also addressed procedural errors in legal depiction. Peter David's "But I Digress..." arrived in 1990, and Mark Evanier's "P.O.V." was added in late 1994. The letter column "Oh, So?" became one of the signature features of the CBG era.

  Jack Kirby, C.C. Beck, and Alex Toth contributed original covers and spot illustrations to the publication. Fan artists also contributed covers, along with headers and spot art for the column pages. For some years, CBG reprinted installments of Will Eisner's The Spirit comic strip. John Lustig's panel cartoon "Last Kiss" was among the longtime fixtures. Cartoonists including Marc Hansen, Dan Vebber, Fred Hembeck, Mark Martin, and Batton Lash also contributed.

  Cat Yronwode took over the news column with issue #329 on the 7th of March, 1980, renaming it "Fit to Print." Three years later, the entire publication would pass to new ownership.

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• 4. The Krause Transformation

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  In 1983, The Buyer's Guide was purchased by Krause Publications, ending its twelve-year run under independent ownership. Operations moved to Iola, Wisconsin. The publication's name changed beginning with issue #482, dated the 11th of February, 1983, introducing the title Comics Buyer's Guide. Don and Maggie Thompson were hired as editors. Krause also introduced the CBG Customer Service Award, a credential advertisers could display to signal a clean record with buyers.

  Comics Buyer's Guide was named Best Comics Publication at the 1985 Kirby Awards. It also received the Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Periodical/Publication in both 1992 and 1993. By the late 1980s, the publication's subscriber count had grown to more than 20,000. In 1992, the magazine spun off its distributor and retailer coverage into a separate periodical: Comics & Games Retailer. That publication ran until 2007. Don Thompson died on the 23rd of May, 1994. In 1998, Krause brought on John Jackson Miller as managing editor and Brent Frankenhoff as projects editor. Maggie Thompson continued as editor.

  In July 2002, Krause was itself acquired by F+W Publications, marking CBG's second change of corporate ownership. It set in motion a decade of format experimentation.

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• 5. The Fan Awards

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  Issue #500, published on the 17th of June, 1983, announced the first Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Awards. The program drew on work Don and Maggie Thompson had done a decade earlier, administering the Goethe Awards through their fanzine Newfangles. The Goethe Award shared close ties with The Buyer's Guide for Comic Fandom, which had itself received it for Favorite Fanzine in 1972. The Goethe Award was also known later as the Comic Fan Art Award. Reviving that tradition of reader recognition was among the Thompsons' stated aspirations for CBG.

  As many as 5,000 votes were cast per year during the 1990s, the height of the program's reach. Voting had begun as a subscriber-only process before opening to all participants. The awards were presented at the annual Chicago Comicon until 1996, when the Wizard Fan Awards moved into that same event. From that point, CBG published the results in its own pages rather than announcing them at a ceremony.

  The awards program ran until approximately 2010, three years before CBG itself published its last issue.

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• 6. Format Shifts and Closure

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  Issue #1595, published in June 2004, marked CBG's transformation from a weekly tabloid into a monthly, perfect-bound magazine. A price guide for contemporary comics was added, along with features aimed at readers who viewed comics as financial investments. This strategy connected to the yearly Standard Catalog of Comic Books, produced in partnership with Human Computing. Human Computing was the maker of the collecting software ComicBase.

  In July 2005, CBG began archiving past features at an online service called CBGXtra.com. Brent Frankenhoff was promoted to editor in 2006, with Maggie Thompson taking the title of Senior Editor. By late 2009, the page count was reduced, the perfect binding ended, and the price guide listings were removed.

  On the 9th of January, 2013, Krause Publications announced that Comics Buyer's Guide would cease publication. The final issue was numbered 1699 and appeared in March 2013. The website CBGXtra.com and the publication's Facebook page continued as archived resources for a time. Both were eventually replaced by the website of new owner Antique Trader.

  Alter Ego #122, a tribute issue published in January 2014, was devoted to what might have been CBG's 1,700th issue.

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