Dark Horse Comics is a comic book publisher whose headquarters is located in Milwaukie, Oregon. It was created in 1986 by Mike Richardson. This is the third comic book publisher in the United States.
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In 1986 Mike Richardson was the owner of a chain of stores specializing in the sale of comics, named Pegasus Books, located in Portland in the state of Oregon. Then flourishing trade and the development of a profitable independent market, following the success of Ninja Turtles grew that year to found his own publishing house named Dark Horse Comics. In July, he released his first two comic books, an anthology Dark Horse Presents and Boris the Bear.
The first is an anthology in which the very first issue is published Concrete by Paul Chadwick. This title then experienced a fairly significant success then having its own magazine, it got in two years twenty-six awards or nominations.
The other comics, Boris the Bear, attracts as much readers with violent stories and parodies mocking the other characters comics publishers and the very functioning of the comics industry. In both cases, Mike Richardson betting on 10,000 copies sold but sales far exceed its hopes to reach 50,000 copies sold. This supports him in his decision to become an editor and continue in this adventure.
Film adaptations
After focusing on original creations, Dark Horse turned to the adaptation of films like Alien, Predator or Star Wars. It is still in Dark Horse Presents that are first proposed these adaptations before comics devoted to each of these franchises did not see the day. Later other series like Buffy against the vampires took over of the adaptations of films. These adaptations are successful and Dark Horse develops the universe of the series and obtained license and offers crossover between these series. Thus, the Alien and Predators fight in comics published by Dark Horse long before the idea of making a movie.
The publisher, however, does not just this vein and also launched many series which remains the property of their creators. Thus we find Grendel by Matt Wagner, Frank Miller’s Sin City, Hellboy Mike Mignola. While some of these series were already published by another publisher is every time in Dark Horse Presents Dark Horse that pre-publish this new series. Sin City appears in issue 51 in 1991, John Byrne’s Next Men in the 54 etc. To showcase these Dark Horse comic, they created the “Legend” collection at the request of several authors. There are found Frank Miller, John Byrne, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy created for the occasion, Art Adams, Dave Gibbons, Geoff Darrow and Paul Chadwick.
Manga translations
Another area developed by Dark Horse, from 1987, is the publication of manga translations. The first is that of proposed adaptation of Godzilla Kazuhisa Iwata 1987. This test will be followed by many other translations like Oh My Goddess! of Kosuke Fujishima, Ghost in the Shell of Masamune Shirow, Blade of the Immortal by Hiroaki Samura that allowed dark horse to win in this area before the manga edition did not know a great boom. Dark Horse continues to publish important manga like Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima.
In 1990, Dark Horse committed Diana Schutz as editorial manager. With various titles, she held this position for 25 years and published important authors as Will Eisner, Frank Miller and Neil Gaiman. In 1992, Dark Horse diversifies and creates several divisions: Dark Horse Entertainment in 1992 when negotiating agreements for adaptations by Dark Horse, Dark Horse.com in 1995 to manage its web presence, M and DH Press publisher of books that are not comics in 2004, Dark Horse Indie producing independent films in 2005. This translates to the adaptation of comic book movies like The Mask in 1994, Mystery Men in 1999, etc.) . So i decided to make a top 10 Dark Horse best comics, keep in mind that these are my favourite so do not hate, have fun!
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