Teckno Comixs – What Went Wrong
The Tekno Comix company was founded by Laurie Silvers and Mitchell Rubenstein as a division of their publicly traded company, Big Entertainment. The Tekno Comix brand was discontinued in 1997.
Though Big Entertainment-branded books with the same characters were still published for the rest of that year in 1997. Tekno Comix tried to get as much exposure as possible between 1994 and 1997, but the competition from comics proved to be too stiff for the next company and they dissolved.
Tekno Comix publications featured many different characters and situations from comics created by some famous authors and others in the world of comics, but were written and illustrated primarily by comic book creators hired by Tekno Comix.
Some of his comics include:
Gene Roddenberry’s Lost Universe (later renamed Xander in Lost Universe),
I-Bots by Isaac Asimov,
John Jakes’ Mulkon Empire (six-issue limited series),
Primals By Leonard Nimoy,
Mickey Spillane’s Mike Danger
Neil Gaiman’s Lady Justice,
Mr. Hero the Newmatic Man by Neil Gaiman,
Phage: Shadow Death by Neil Gaiman (six-issue limited series).
I was one of the lucky ones to have attended a comic book convention at the Sawgrass Mills mall in
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in or around August 1994 and was able to meet with most of the people listed above, it was a pleasure to have met some of those people and shared their views on where the comics company was headed. . Unfortunately, his timing was not right for his company to do well, as I recall comics were taking a backseat to sports collectibles, at least in the state of Florida.
The newly formed Florida Marlins were taking the spotlight locally and I think the comic book industry across the country was having an indirect impact on sports. The 1990s marked the comics industry’s overproduction era and watered-down versions of an incredibly large number of comics titles. The two main guilty companies. I can remember the overproduction of Spider-Man, the McFarlane saga, which by the way is the reason why the comic is worth nothing today. All the companies and their greed led in part to the demise of Tekno Comix.
Some of the Tekno Comix were fun to read, I was a fan of Leonard Nimoy’s Primortals and have a nice autographed article on my blog, yours for the taking. If anyone would like an expired Gene Roddenberry Lost Universe phone card, just send me a note and a stamped envelope and I’ll send it to you, send me a note first, I only have about 10 left.
Quote from 1970 “Keep on Trucking”…