Comic Book Resources (
CBR) was founded by Jonah Weiland in 1995 as a development of the Kingdom Come Message Board, a message forum that Weiland created to discuss
DC Comics' then-new
mini-series of the same name.
Acquisition by Valnet By April 4, 2016,
CBR was sold to Valnet Inc., a
Montreal, Canada–based company that owns other media properties including
Screen Rant. The site was relaunched as CBR.com on August 23, 2016, with the blogs integrated into the site.
Popverse reported that following the acquisition by Valnet "comics were increasingly sidelined for coverage [...], as were both reviews and columns as focuses for publishing; instead, the site refocused on shorter news pieces and reactions to news stories".
Firings and staff turmoil Adam Swiderski,
CBR's editor-in-chief since July 2022, along with "senior news editor Stephen Gerding after 18 years with
CBR and senior features editor Christopher Baggett after eight years" were laid off by Valnet in May 2023.
Heidi MacDonald, for
The Beat, reported that Swiderski, Gerding and Baggett were removed for "standing up for writers" and "pushing back against" changes Valnet instituted. MacDonald wrote that "writers were being asked to do more work while shrinking the pay-per-view rates. The situation was described to me by one person as 'working writers to the bone', saying "The situation is so dire that in addition to the three editors, I'm told two HR people were laid off, who also objected to the demands that management was making on writers, who, as a reminder, are contractors, not employees". In August 2023,
Rich Johnston of
Bleeding Cool commented that there appears to be "serious internal tensions" at CBR and highlighted that former CBR Comics News Editor Sean Gribbin stated between May and August ten News Editors have either left CBR or been laid off. Johnston reported that CBR Managing Editor Jon Arvden pushed back on speculation that CBR was eliminating its news section. ==Reception==