1981. When Starslayer #2 came up short a few pages, Stevens was approached to fill in the remaining pages, and ultimately came up with The Rocketeer. Experimentation and expansion In 1983 Pacific upgraded to paper with higher quality ink. Pacific's innovations in creator-owned properties and high-quality printings were soon imitated by industry leaders DC Comics and Marvel Comics. Pacific continued to distribute and publish comics, running both operations from a San Diego warehouse to which they'd moved in July 1982. They also purchased a firehouse in Steeleville, Illinois and converted it into a distribution hub. It was also operating warehouses in L.A. and Phoenix at the time. Printing about 500,000 comic books every month, the Schanses employed around forty people at their San Diego operation alone, and were grossing over $3.5 million per annum. The brothers hired their father, Steven E. Schanes, as financial vice president and their mother (Christine Marra) as office manager. Elder brother Paul "Pablo" worked in the financial records department, and sister Chris, an L.A.-based attorney, provided counsel on legal affairs. Later output Pacific's published output contained editorials by David Scroggy, who had started as a comics retailer in 1975, and risen to general manager of Pacific's four San Diego shops by the late 1970s. He helped to bring the reclusive Steve Ditko to Pacific. Ditko's Pacific offering Missing Man was previewed in Captain Victory #6, and then featured in issues of Pacific Presents. His work was scripted by Mark Evanier. Meanwhile, Pacific published a magazine-sized black-and-white reprint of Rog 2000 stories that John Byrne had done in the '70s for Charlton Comics, as well as a number of titles under its parent company Blue Dolphin Enterprises. It also welcomed Bruce Jones to the company, and Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier's Groo the Wanderer. 3-D, Elric, and falling sales By 1984, Steve Schanes decided to bring back 3-D to comics, a fleeting trend in the 1950s that had then been stymied by poor printing separations. Ray Zone was hired to do the production, after he had successfully converted a Kirby image for Honeycomb cereal. Steve Schanes decided the 3-D book would be Alien Worlds 3-D, featuring the first published work of Art Adams, alongside John Bolton, Bill Wray and others. Sales on the expensively-produced comic, however, were poor, and sales all round were following suit. One-shots became more common, and tolerable sales on Elric of Melniboné