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8: Adventures in Editing

Researching this blog can lead down unexpected rabbit holes...

Peter Gillis mentioned a few times a "disastrous attempt" to start a company New Media Comics, which got me intrigued. Turns out New Media Distribution set up a publishing wing in 1980, hiring Richard Howell and Carol Kalish as production managers, with Peter Gillis as editorial director, spearheading a line of quarterly comics anthologies. Gillis' role turned out to be short lived, according to the press release in NMP's own fanzine, Comics Feature #12/13 (1981):

"New Media Publishing, Inc., has undergone yet another editorial shake-up. As of June 1st, Peter Gillis will leave his post as editorial director of the gestating NMP line of Graphic Magazines, and return to freelancing. His place will be taken by Richard Howell, the production manager of NMP. Gillis' change of status was an amicable agreement between him and NMP publisher Hal Schuster regarding their differing attitudes towards magazine production. Gillis and Schuster agreed that Gillis was not the right choice for producing several series of quarterly magazines, and that his real skills lay in the field of writing. Gillis will be submitting scripts to Marvel Comics once again, as well as to Eclipse. He will also continue to collaborate with George Freeman on a forthcoming fantasy series for NMP's upcoming FANTASY ILLUSTRATED title. Current plans call for Gillis to also be responsible for the contents and final packaging of ADVENTURE ILLUSTRATED #1... The "Ransom" strip is being voluntarily suspended by Gillis due to Weiss' other commitments and resultant inability to guarantee delivery of his NMP work on time, and Gillis' wish to only continue the strip if its artist can capture the exact feel of the material."

There's a whole lot of lines here to be read between. As far as I can tell, NMP eventually only put out 4 comics issues across 3 different anthologies, all in the year following Gillis' departure. Gillis' two strips in development mentioned here never made an appearance, nor did any work of his for Eclipse. Hosea Ransom drawn by Alan Weiss would've been an offbeat Western, with plenty of Gillis weirdness. No clue about the other strip with George Freeman, whom he later worked with on Warp.

Gillis put together stellar creative lineups for Adventure Illustrated and Fantasy Illustrated, including Moench & Sienkiewicz, McGregor & Sutton, Englehart & Ditko and P Craig Russell. However, neither title made it to a second issue, effectively spelling the end of New Media Comics by 1982. NMP kept publishing the occasional fanzine, with Comics Feature running until 1987. As for their parent distribution company, that was sold to Steve Geppi in '82, who rebranded it Diamond.

Gillis was offered another editing job (most likely later in '81) as assistant to Jim Salicrup at Marvel. He chose instead to return to Chicago to finish his doctorate. There's a real What If for you...

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