stumbled when First Comics acquired the rights, putting Pacific in the awkward position of continuing as distributor on a comic from a rival publisher that they had helped promote. Competition and collapse After organizational difficulties pushed back the release of Starslayer by several months, Mike Grell decided to take his creator-owned property to First Comics, and a domino effect began to occur as the loss of a high-profile title to a rival publisher engendered bad industry PR, leading other creators to lose faith in Pacific. More importantly, the distribution arm of Pacific was suffering serious problems, due in part to overly-generous credit extensions to retailers, which were not paid back as quickly as expected. Thus, Steve Schanes explained: Pacific's publication arm was also attracting competitors, and Pacific found itself distributing competitors' titles, including Kitchen Sink Press, Last Gasp (publisher), and Rip Off Press. With this in mind, other publishers—including Capital City (whose Nexus comic outsold several Pacific titles), Comico, Aardvark-Vanaheim, Educomics, Quality, Eagle, Eclipse, First, Vortex, New Media, Fantagraphics, Mirage—feared that having Pacific, a rival publisher, as their distributor could result in their being cut off from comic shops. This likely played a factor in the multiple alternate distributors who came into being to compete with Pacific, until nearly a quarter of Pacific's comic-shop accounts defected to alternate distributors in 1984, skipping out on paying Pacific for upwards of three months' worth of comic books. At the same time, Pacific and parent company Blue Dolphin Enterprises found themselves the target of lawsuits, including some dealing with foreign rights and royalties for Pacific-published creator-owned titles. In August 1984, with the company $740,000 in debt, the Schaneses informed their staff that they would all be out of work by September. According to Steve Schanes, Pacific's publishing arm was still seeing profit at the time of the closure, but it was outweighed by the losses of the distribution arm, and he and his brother lacked the business expertise to sell off part of the business. Liquidation After the 1984 collapse of Pacific, many of its creator-owned publications moved to Eclipse Comics: Bruce Jones' Twisted Tales, Alien Worlds, and Somerset Holmes; Dave Stevens' Rocketeer Special and a one-shot of Mark Evanier/Sergio Aragones' Groo the Wanderer. As Pacific went into liquidation in September 1984, Phil Seuling's distribution company Sea Gate Distributors also closed down. Pacific's distribution centers and warehouses were purchased by Bud Plant, Inc.,