Overview
Dark Horse Comics, Inc. is a privately held Oregon company established in 1986. Corporate headquarters are located in Milwaukie, Oregon.Company Profile
Founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson, behind the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals, Dark Horse Comics has grown to become the third-largest comics publisher in the United States and is acclaimed internationally for the quality and diversity of its line. By attracting the top talent in the comics field, Dark Horse continues to change the shape of the industry and grow its brand throughout the world. In conjunction with its sister company Dark Horse Entertainment, Dark Horse has over 350 properties currently represented under the Dark Horse banner, serving as the jumping-off point for comics, books, films, television, electronic games, toys, and collectibles. In 2008, Dark Horse distributes its characters and concepts into more than fifty countries, continuing its mission of content creation and distribution in all of its forms throughout the world.
History
Started in 1986 as an offshoot of an Oregon comic book retail chain (Things From Another World) Dark Horse has grown into a multi-dimensional publishing and entertainment company.
In 1980, founder Mike Richardson used a credit card with a $2,000 credit limit to open a comic book store, Pegasus Books, in the small resort town of Bend, Oregon. His intention was to write and illustrate a children's book himself, while working the store, but the business expanded and his project was put on hold. He still plans to finish that book. As business grew, Richardson opened new retail locations in Oregon and Washington state. He soon became frustrated, however, by the lack of quality in the product he was selling, and so, using funds from his retail operation, began his own publishing company. From the very start it was a different kind of publishing house. Writers and artists were treated as partners, an unheard-of generosity in the comic-publishing field at that time. Soon the industry's top creators were flocking to Dark Horse where they became involved in the publishing and marketing of their creations.
Dark Horse Comics launched with two initial titles in 1986, Dark Horse Presents and Boris the Bear. Paul Chadwick's Concrete, about a congressional speechwriter who transforms into a 2,000-pound cement creature, was the company's first hit. Chadwick received an unprecedented twenty six award nominations for his creation. Within one year of its first publication, Dark Horse Comics added nine new titles to its roster, including The American, The Mark, Trekker and Black Cross. Today Dark Horse releases about thirty comic books and graphic novels per month. Dark Horse remains the number three comics publisher in the direct sales market, behind industry giants Marvel and DC Comics.
In 1988, Dark Horse revolutionized comics based on popular films with the release of its hit series, Aliens. Predator followed with similar success. The launch of Star Wars in 1990 solidified Dark Horses domination of movie-based comics series. While licensed projects had been around for decades, most publishers devoted few resources to such titles since they did not own them. Dark Horse took a different tack by plotting stories and using top talent to create multiple comics series that were virtual sequels to popular films. This fresh approach met with enormous success and sales on these popular titles sailed into the millions Today, Dark Horse is the acknowledged industry leader in this profitable publishing niche. Current publications include Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Aliens, Predator, Terminator, Tarzan, Conan, and many others.
In 1990, Dark Horse startled the entire industry by teaming up its two hot Fox movie franchises in one comic. Aliens versus Predator caught the comics industry by surprise, and its success spawned numerous copycats. Today, the comic crossover is a staple of the industry. Over the years, Dark Horse has published innovative crossover events such as Terminator versus RoboCop, and Aliens versus Terminator. This strategy led directly to a series of crossover projects with industry giant, DC Comics. Projects such as Batman/Predator, Superman/Aliens, and Joker/Mask have been runaway hits.
That same year, Frank Miller (Batman: The Dark Knight Returns) and Dave Gibbons (The Watchmen) brought Give Me Liberty to Dark Horse. Later that year, Frank teamed with artist Geof Darrow and released Hard Boiled, again through Dark Horse. The success of these titles, together with Dark Horse's creator's rights platform, led to a stampede of talent from the "Big Two" to Dark Horse. High-profile creators such as Mike Mignola, Art Adams, John Byrne, and Chris Claremont brought projects to a company other than Marvel and DC for the first time. As a result of this talent movement, the field was opened wide for other creators and led directly to the formation of Image Comics, another company initially dedicated to creator rights.
In 1992, having achieved great success transforming film characters into comic book stars, it was a logical progression for Dark Horse to reverse that creative process and begin using its own original characters and stories as the basis for film and television. Dark Horse Entertainment, Inc. was formed by Richardson and set up on the lot of Twentieth Century Fox through a first-look deal with Largo Entertainment. Dark Horse Entertainment immediately went into development with a half-dozen projects, resulting in the production of four films in less than three years. Two of those productions, The Mask and Timecop, were created by Mike Richardson and became number one hits. In the sixteen years since its inception, DHE has produced over two dozen films and television projects. Current projects include Hellboy II and RIPD at Universal, Ark at Sony, Grendel at Warner Brothers, Arch Enemies at Paramount, and Criminal Macabre at MGM.
1993 saw Dark Horse return to its roots, and a new corporation was formed to open a store at the Universal Studios City Walk in March. Named Things From Another World, Inc., it was the corporation's flagship retail operation, ambitiously designed with a crashed spaceship embedded in the building.
1995 saw the next step in the company's evolution as DarkHorse.com, Dark Horse's award-winning internet site, was launched. Featuring interviews, previews, flash animation, games, contests, and online comics, as well as the virtual retail site for the Things For Another World chain, the site has grown today to receive over 500,000 unique visitors and over 3,250,000 page views per month. That translates to roughly 40,000,000 page views per year. Retail sales on the site are projected to break 2.5 million dollars in 08.
The Dark Horse Deluxe brand was initiated in 1998 with a line of merchandise that included model kits, toys, apparel, and collectibles. The division established a goal of extending the Dark Horse brand by using Dark Horse properties as the basis for its merchandise. As the years passed, DHD's vision statement has evolved, and the division now sees itself as a cutting-edge pop culture operation. Recent product lines include Tim Burton's Tragic Toys for Girls and Boys, Peter Jackson's WETA line, Joss Whedon's Serenity, and a new line of toys from Guillermo del Toro. Dark Horse creates product based on classic characters such as Peanuts, Little Lulu, Flash Gordon, Tarzan, Popeye, and Underdog, as well as new cutting edge properties such as Emily the Strange and the internet hit Penny Arcade. Of course, Dark Horse also produces products based on its own publishing line, with popular product featuring Sin City, 300, Hellboy, The Mask, SpyBoy, and Go Boy 7.
Around 2001, the comics market changed dramatically as traditional bookstores developed a strong and growing interest in comics in the form of graphic novels. Fueling this newfound interest was manga-that is, comics imported from Japan. Dark Horse was twenty years ahead of the market, having published manga from its second year of operation. Dark Horse president Mike Richardson began visiting Japan regularly in the early nineties and has cultivated many friendships with the creative talent there. As a result, Dark Horse publishes manga by the most respected creators in Japan. The list includes Koike's Lone Wolf & Cub (over 1,000,000 copies sold) and Crying Freeman; Otomo's Akira; Shirow's Ghost In the Shell; Nightow's Trigun; Tezuka's Astro Boy; Samura's Blade of the Immortal; Sonoda's Gunsmith Cats; and America's longest running manga series, Oh My Goddess, by Fujishima.
Recently, Dark Horse has had tremendous success in bookstores with staple titles, such as Frank Miller's Sin City and 300, and Mike Mignola's Hellboy series. Other non-traditional comic book outlets have grown over the years. For instance, The Perry Bible Fellowship by Nicholas Gurewitch was the top-selling graphic novel on Amazon.com.
Over the course of eighteen years, Dark Horse has developed a strong distribution network into the traditional bookstore market. It seemed a natural move to expand the company's offerings into the more traditional publishing world. In 2004, M Press was created in order to offer traditional reading fare in the form of prose novels and mainstream publications. Initial offerings included Ursula Bacon's autobiography Shanghai Diary, the Playboy Interviews series, and Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy. A companion imprint was formed, DH Press, in order to create and distribute novels based on popular media franchises as well as Dark Horse's own characters. Offerings included books featuring Hellboy, the Universal Monsters, Scarface, and Vampire Hunter D.
In 2005, Dark Horse Entertainment partnered with DVD distributor Image Entertainment to form Dark Horse Indie, an independent film production company. Over the next twenty-four months, four films were completed: Michael Olmos' Splinter, starring Tom Sizemore and Edward Olmos; Tim Sullivan's Driftwood; Chris Patton's parody; Monarch of the Moon; and Bruce Campbell's My Name is Bruce.
2007 saw a new partnership between Dark Horse and MySpace. Dark Horse re-launched its legendary flagship title Dark Horse Presents in a new online format found only on MySpace. Some of the industry's top creators developed new material for the project, including Joss Whedon with Sugar Shock, and My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way's The Umbrella Academy.
Additionally, Dark Horse sells its graphic novels internationally. In 2008, the Dark Horse Licensing Group was formed to handle Dark Horse's International sales. Dark Horse publications now sell in over fifty countries in a variety of languages.
In 2008, Dark Horse, in partnership with Universal Pictures, released Hellboy II: The Golden Army, written by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and directed by acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro. The film was released to rave reviews from fans and critics alike and debuted at number one at the box office.
In the same year, Dark Horse entered into a worldwide production agreement with Universal, establishing a studio home for any future Dark Horse movie adaptations.
Dark Horse, in partnership with Big Tent Entertainment and the NHK broadcasting corporation, brought Domo-kun, a popular Japanese cult-icon character, to the United States, with a series of products ranging from Qee figurines to journals and stationery sets. Dark Horse now sells over thirty-five different Domo-themed products, available in stores nationwide.
2009 saw numerous milestones for Dark Horse, as the company ventured into the realm of digital distribution, making some of Dark Horse’s best-selling titles available for download on the iPhone including Star Wars, Hellboy, and The Umbrella Academy. Best-selling author Janet Evanovich and Dark Horse announced the release of Troublemaker, the author’s first-ever graphic novel and the newest volume in her best-selling Alex Barnaby series. Dark Horse also teamed up with video-game company BioWare to publish an all-new Mass Effect miniseries, co-written by lead game writer Mac Walters. One of the years biggest announcements was Jim Shooter coming to Dark Horse as head writer for the re-launch of the Gold Key Comics characters: Turok, Son of Stone, Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom, Magnus, Robot Fighter, and Mighty Samson, with further characters and new comic writers to be announced.
In 2010, Dark Horse began a new partnership with Japanese manga publisher CLAMP, collecting such best-selling titles as Clover, Chobits, and Magic Knight Rayearth in omnibus format for the first time ever. In the same year, Dark Horse, in close conjunction with Nickelodeon Studios, began production of The Art of Avatar the Last Airbender, collecting never before seen conceptual artwork from the popular animated series in single hardcover art book. Dark Horse also announced the return of comics legend Roy Thomas to a new Conan series entitled Conan: Road of Kings, expected in comic shops in early 2011.
