After 35 years and over 2,000 issues, Comic Shop News has been sold to a tech entrepreneur, Dave Witting, and a comics retailer, Brad Gile. Ward Batty, who along with Cliff Biggers has been publishing the weekly newsletter since 1987, posted the news on his Facebook: “Comic Shop News has new owners and will continue,” he wrote. “We have two more issues and the new owners take over with 1847. They have big plans and I’m excited to see what they do with it.” The publication has several milestones coming up, including issue #2000 and their 40th anniversary.
Comic Shop News is sold to comic shops in bundles of 90 and distributed for free; the publication has always been profitable, the owners said, but they announced in September that they were putting it up for sale (see “Batty and Biggers Put ‘Comic Shop News’ on the Block”).
Witting started his career in animation, including working on three seasons of Disney’s Gargoyles, then went on to produce video games before founding the software agency Rocket / DEPT, which he recently sold. Gile was a high school English teacher before becoming a comics retailer; he owns Stairway to Heaven Comics in Newington, NH.
Issue #1846, the last for Batty and Biggers, will feature the Red K awards with the best and worst of 2022. After that, Biggers will work on a graphic novel that he has had in progress for a while, and Batty will focus on his writing.
Source: ICv2
