Comics industry's Don Quixote.

• Author: PETERSON, ERIC
• Position: Mile High Comics Inc.; Chuck Rozanski - Brief Article

Economically, it might not be the best time for a quest, but Chuck Rozanski is on one.

"There have been 150,000 to 200,000 different comic books that have been created," said Rozanski, president and founder of Denver's Mile High Comics Inc., the comic book industry's largest retailer, "but there is no place where you can go to, as a collector, and see everything that has been produced."

To fill this void, Rozanski has untertaken his quest. Every day, Mile High invests $1,000 in a Web-based comic book database, complete with high-density cover scans, prices, and other relevant data. The free data now includes more than 100,000 comic books; the ultimate goal is to cover every comic ever published.

"It's more philosophic than it is financially viable," said Rozanski. "This is a legacy I want to leave behind."

Rozanski started buying and selling comic books door-to-door as a 13-year-old military kid in 1968 Germany. Upon his family's return to the United States in 1970, he took the kid's job one step further, working the Colorado Springs flea-market scene.

In 1972, he attended his first national comic book convention and grossed $1,800.

"Doing that at the age of 17, that was sort of the epiphany," he said. "I realized, 'Hey, wait a minute! There could really be something in this.'"

Rozanski opened his first Mile High Comics retail store in Boulder in 1974. He opened three more locations in the next 24 months, but the swift growth came with a heavy load of debt and a shock to the system.

"I was totally unprepared for that," he said. "I was having a hard time making ends meet." Then Rozanski came across the now-revered Mile High Collection, 18,000 untouched, pre-1960 comic books. After acquiring the collection, Mile High Comics launched a mail-order operation that quickly overshadowed its stores. Today the company has an inventory 10 million books deep.

It also operates six-comic book shops in Colorado and California, including its 11,000 square foot flagship store...