The Comics Rack

Comic Book Memories Pt. 11

Note: I must admit that my rememberer is rather faulty, especially over events that took place over 20 years ago. I just came across a remark made in an ancient message board thread that reminded me that the fellow who set up the Glenwood warehouse in Downey was Bob Hellems, so that little matter (mentioned a couple of columns ago) is wrapped up. On other items, I'm finding more questions than answers. There is a lot of vague information out on the web and many of the items concerning Glenwood's demise I found over the last couple of years have disappeared, so we're stuck with my memory to try to put everything in context. I'm pretty firm on Pat's departure being in early to mid 1986 and, if I am correct with this date, then a whole lot of things happened very quickly, but the incidents, and their order, get kind of jumbled up. So, with this short apology in mind, I would ask the reader's indulgence in what follows...

I can't remember when we first suspected that Glenwood might be in trouble. Rumors, of course, spread like a California wildfire, even in the old days of the fan press (pre-computer) and there were hints and suggestions that would crop up from time to time; mainly dealing with Glenwood being a slow pay to some independent publishers. Somewhere in latter days of 1986, we noticed that a number of independent titles were very late in shipping. This was not uncommon in those days, as the smaller publishers did not always adhere to a regular schedule. There were also no penalties for late shipping as there are today. So, the rumors coupled with the late shipping didn't set off any particular alarms for us. Then we made one of our infrequent trips to Bud Plant in LA.

I've mentioned Plant's operation before and I'm pretty well convinced that if a definitive history of comic distribution is ever written, Bud's short foray into distribution will be recognized as a model of how things should have been done. One of Plant's strengths (and there were many) was in the stocking of back issues from independent publishers. This allowed the indie publishers to have their product out where it could be seen and allowed us, as retailers, to keep restocking titles that sold particularly well (like the Corben books) without making a huge capital investment upfront (ordering was, and still is, a total crapshoot). Restocking our indie titles, along with many of the books and graphic novels that Glenwood didn't stock was the main reason for our visits although, I must admit, we also wanted to stay in contact with the Plant's LA staff.

Returning to our narrative, we find me walking into the Plant warehouse. I had a pretty long list in hand and started by checking on a couple of early issues of Son of Mutant World. To my chagrin I find that they not only have the issues I'm looking for, but 2 issues beyond those! Searches through other indie titles showed a similar pattern. An issue here, an issue there-it all added up to product that we had ordered but never received from Glenwood. Needless to say, I rang up a good-sized bill. When I got back to the store I called Glen over at Glenwood to ask about the "why" of the situation. Glen's response was that the company had encountered some issues with some of the independent publishers, had a bit of a cash flow problems, blah, blah, blah, but all was back on track and not to worry. Richard and I discussed the conversation at length and decided to do nothing for the moment, but we would keep an eye on the situation.

Now I'm sure the more astute among you may be wondering why we didn't cut and run at this first sign of trouble. To be honest, as I look back on the situation, I'm wondering the same thing. You need to understand, however, that we had a twice weekly run to Kolb News Agency in Whittier for our general magazines to consider. Due to the freeway situations in the greater LA area, driving from Whittier to LA expended a huge amount of time: time we felt would be better spent in the store taking care of customers. In addition, I was working another job and a half during this time, as I was teaching music to private students at my home and also was the choir director at a local church, which tied up my Thursday nights and Sunday mornings. The additional time on the road was not something I really wanted to add to an already taxing schedule. All these factors considered, however, if we had paid more attention to the second warning flag, we might have opted to switch to Plant immediately.

Somewhere around this time (or it may have been in the first part of 1987), it was announced that the founder of Glenwood, Russ Ernst, had sold the company to four of his employees (and I will add here, that I have rarely seen this item mentioned as a part of the demise of Glenwood). The shipment of indies had improved somewhat between the first incident and this, so it looked like a case of someone retiring from the business while they were young enough to enjoy it. Within a short amount of time, however, we had the first delay of the weekly comic shipment. A payment mixup with Marvel and DC was cited as the cause and the books arrived several hours late. Reportedly, Ernest flew into the main offices to help sort out the mess and then charged Glenwood a consultant fee, but I've never been able to fully substantiate this. Things seemed to smooth out over the next couple of weeks. Then the axe fell.

I'm sure it was in April of 1987. Glenwood's shipment was held up again. And then held up longer. Then I was finally able to get through to an employee who told me that the books were not yet available and most likely wouldn't arrive at all. Panic! I called Ken up at Plant's and said that Glenwood had their books held up. He'd already heard about it (Ken knew all and saw all). Could he fill my order for the week? Sure. Here are the numbers, I'd be up as fast as I could get there. Drove like a bat out of hell, breaking several speed laws. Got to Plant's to find they had filled all of our order except for Groo. Why this sticks in my mind, I don't know, but they had gotten shorted on their Groo order, so I would have to wait a week for it. That was okay, because I had informed Glenwood on the phone that I was taking my current catalogue to Plant (we had just turned them in) and, effective immediately, becoming one of their accounts. This was not a decision we made lightly, since the catalogue order with a distributor was a form of a contract. By cancelling the order after it had been turned in, we were really stepping all over contract law and Glenwood could have sued us, but, as we found out, they had other problems.

As I've pieced the story together over the years, the root of Glenwood's demise was in the black and white comic explosion of the 80s (I'll deal with this in a separate column). From what I've heard, Glenwood bought heavily into black and white titles with the idea of selling them to retailers and directly to fans. When the black and white market went bust, they had a ton of these books in their main warehouse. This, of course, impeded their cash flow and I would speculate that Ernst saw the handwriting on the wall around the time he sold the company. To offset some of this loss, many of the small indie publishers were simply not paid, which was what brought about the first warning flag mentioned above. In addition, I know that there were a number of large accounts that had extended their credit terms with Glenwood to the max and beyond-another factor in the cash flow problem.

Exactly how all this affected the weekly shipments of Marvel and DC I have no idea, but, as I understand it, a distributor had credit terms with both the Big Two. So long as the bills were paid, they could receive the books on a credit basis and the money the distributor received from its accounts would then go to pay for the books they had just received on credit. Somewhere, which was probably at the time of the first delay, Glenwood missed a payment, their ability to buy on credit was revoked and they had to go on a strictly cash on delivery basis. By the time of the second, and fatal, book delay, Glenwood didn't have the cash to pay for the books, the books weren't delivered to Glenwood and without the books in hand, they couldn't generate the cash to pay for them. End of story.

The fallout from all this was quite a sight to behold. Employee checks were bouncing. A local distributor and publisher got a court order that closed the Glenwood warehouse in Downey and the distributor was allowed to remove product that would cover his losses in product sold on credit to Glenwood. Since we had already established an account with Bud Plant, we simply started the trek to LA each week without any interruption of service. Other retailers were not so lucky and many had to apply to Plant as a new account and missed a week or more of the new books. By May of 1987, Glenwood declared bankruptcy and, as a result, several indie comic publishers were also forced into bankruptcy due to the money owed them by Glenwood.

And, just as a footnote, I recall from the fan press at the time, and also a couple of corroborations, that one of the employees who bought Glenwood from Ernst was a teenager at the time and had to have his parents co-sign the purchase documents.