A quick look at the history of Dark Horse comic books
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- Опубліковано 20 лис 2020
- A brief (and yes, largely incomplete) overview of the start of Dark Horse comics and why this little comic book company managed to make a name for themselves and cement themselves as an indie that survived three decades. A look at the initiatives that worked, and the ones that didn't.
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Dark Horse has been interesting to watch over the years. I think their focus on mini series rather than ongoings in their early years really helped. Sure, they still had deadline issues but the quality of their output usually made it worth it.
It's been a little sad to watch them struggle for the last 10 years or so as they try to redefine their identity as a publisher. They've lost a lot of lucrative licenses and manga has found more success in other places leaving a few solid titles and a lot of books that tend to fly under the radar. I'm crossing my fingers that they make it through this current climate and come out stronger.
They got berserk
I remember dark horse as that company that always did the comics based off movies. I remember reading terminator and alien comics from them. They also did umbrella academy which I like.
Most of there comics weren’t films fortunately.
Dark Horse is what I refer to as 90's comics. Madman and Grendel forever!
Good stuff. I found Concrete was an interesting (if not always satisfying) read as well. And they've done a fair amount of Flaming Carrot over the years too, which is always a plus in my book.
As a 90s kid dark horse was the shit
And the Mask!
@@razorramoneljefe5956Agreed!
I would have never gotten into comic books if it weren't for Dark Horse Comics. My first comic was Star Wars: Republic #50. That cover was just so striking to me as a kid. I never understood why so many Star Wars fans didn't talk about the comics. There was so much great material in them. This summer I read many stories from the Republic series, and while they weren't as great as I remembered them to be, there was still a lot of good material in them. You have Obi-wan being kidnapped by a dark Jedi and having to escape with a clone trooper from her planet; you have Anakin joining a group Jedi in training who lost their masters in the war; you have Jedi having real emotional death scenes; if I remember correctly, you have mission where a senior Jedi teams up with a soldier, a Jedi undercover (the popular Quinlan Vos), and smuggler/underworld type characters to get through a blockade.The whole Clone Wars part of the Star Wars: Republic run really was an entertaining, interesting, and somewhat depressing examination on what war does to a society and its people. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: Dark Times were also good. I only paid attention to the first issues and the ending issues of the first main story for Knights of the Old Republic (not sure why.), but what I read of it was very good and pretty revolutionary for the time (I should just tell the spoilers but people really should read at least the opening story arc of the 2006 series). Star Wars: Dark Times was so well down, and extremely under appreciated. It's been a while since I read an issue, but I remember really feeling how awful the new status quo was for the Star Wars universe and what was lost in the galaxy when the Empire rose. I could go on and on about the Dark Horse Star Wars comics, but I am already writing too much.
the Alien and Predator comics hold a very special place in my heart. absolutely love those stories
"Dark Horse became stable".
I see what you did there. :-)
Catchy.
Dark Horse was my gateway to manga. A good number of the manga I own, have the Dark Horse label on them. I bought everything that Stan Saki put out with his Usagi Yojimbo character in it. The Ghost was just fantastic. She was the spirit of vengeance with twin 45s that seemed to never run out of bullets. She would have been a great movie franchise. I have a nearly complete set of the Sharow Masume books published by Dark Horse, not just the GITS books. Appleseed was my introduction to manga in the early 90s under the Studio Prometheus imprint. It later became part of Dark Horse. My collection of Ah My Goddess titles and monthly floppy editions is just insane There was a time that the number of Dark Horse titles I purchased out numbered what I purchased from DC and Msrvel put together..
That Shonen Jump competitor manga magazine that Dark Horse put was called Manga Blast.
Your purchasing patterns and mine are disturbingly similar. I don't suppose you've been buying Adam Warren's Empowered as well? I know his work on Dirty Pair back in the day were some of my favorite DH stuff, and nice stablemates to Appleseed and Ghost In the Shell. :)
Empowered is a fun book; nice to see that style of comic still being done today. Warren also has great customer engagement.
@@richmcgee434 Adam Warren, Hell Yes! I am fairly certain that I have all of the Dirty Pair stuff he made for DK. I currently have the first 11 volumes of Empowered. I also have several of the Empowered limited series that printed as well. Those are not drawn by Adam Warren, but still very entertaining. I need to check and see if any more has been published recently.
Have you read Gunsmith Cats?
I was always disappointed that they only ever put out the one Bubblegum Crisis series. That was my introduction to anime and I always thought it was strange that it only ever had the one series. Ghost in the Shell still remains one of my favorites.
My first Dark Horse Comics purchase was ALIENS: GENOCIDE #1 when it came out. I picked up the rest of that mini-series and was fortunate to pickup all of the original first limited series of ALIENS VS. PREDATOR before it skyrocketed up in price. Once STAR WARS: DARK EMPIRE #1 came out, I was all-in with Dark Horse Comics until they lost the license to Marvel Comics in 2015. Between all those years, they introduced me to great manga from APPLESEED, DIRTY PAIR, GHOST IN THE SHELL, and they completed the Epic Comics unfinished work: AKIRA.
Regarding Legend writers, I picked up Chris Claremont's first work post Marvel's X-MEN(1991): ALIENS/PREDATOR: DEADLIEST OF THE SPECIES 12 issue limited series. But by far their work chronologically being architects of THE STAR WARS EXPANDED UNIVERSE and sorting out actual "Canon" and the "Infinities Stories"(the 'what-if' ones) and mapping out all of their publications will stand as a masterpiece achievement to the STAR WARS fans that read their works and seek out more of it. Marvel has bungled that so ineptly that I can't imagine them even printing "STAR WARS" comics and just let IDW do their kindergarten level stuff with the license until IDW finally runs out of money or luck. (whichever happens first)
I hope Dark Horse Comics never ends and they continue to find success with jems like THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY while continuing legacy titles like B.P.R.D., GRENDEL, HELLBOY, etc.
Dark Horse Comics has such a rich history, you may want to consider doing a series of videos focusing more on like their manga history. A lot of material just on that topic.
Another thing Mike Richardson was always doing was trying to expand comics to reach outside of the direct market comic shops; especially after newstand died off. They were perhaps the first to include a full size comic with a toy when George Lucas did the SHADOWS OF THE EMPIRE cross media event with STAR WARS in 1996. Putting a comic with BOBA FETT and IG-88 3.75" figures in toy departments at Wal-Mart, Target, Toys'R'Us, etc. with Hasbro's help was a great way to reach children and parents on a weekly store run.✌
Dark Horse had some of the greats....I always had a love for both Dark Horse and Vertigo... Having said that most of the books have been taken from both so IDW is now my number one for this type of imprinting. Once Usagi Yojimbo was snatched by IDW, I haven't really looked back at D.H. What does suck however is when companies do the right thing...and actually make solid choices..but still end up stumbling and failing due to bad timing, and poor luck..
This was great and a informative video about Dark Horse comics. Hellboy and Berserk are my favorite from them.
😕 Wow! I remember when Dark Horse came on the scene. Yep, that confirms it...we're old. 😂
Dark Horse made being a #3 a legit spot. Image came out of different necessities, similar to today and seized being #3.
Man I really enjoyed "The Legend of Mother Sarah", "Martha Washington", "Concrete"...They had the best crossovers with DC too.
The Dirty Pair and The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service are my Dark Horse favorites.
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service really should have been getting more attention.
Agreed. That was the start of my being a bit of an Adam Warren junkie. My local comic shops never carried the Corpse Delivery books when they were knew and they flew under my radar for years. Wish I'd found that series sooner.
I will always have a soft spot for Dark Horse because of the decades of great work they did on Star Wars. It was a sad day when they lost that license.
I'm a fan of Evan Dorkin and Neil Gaiman adaptations, so DH is a publisher I purchase from often these days. Their Direct offerings of prints are very nice, and reasonably priced.
Darkhorse is very underrated.
Yes it is
No it's not
I still have all of my Boris the Bear comics (including the non-Dark Horse issues). I am considering having them custom bound.
Dark Horse books make up about 3% of my collection... mostly Star Wars, Buffy, and Conan.
Glad to hear it you still have Boris the Bear. I still have copies myself. I scripted and edited a couple of them with my brother at my kitchen table.
@@vsmith9905 It’s cool to hear from someone that was involved in the series.
Boris the Bear #1 remains one of my favorite comic issues of all time (in a 40+ year run of collecting comics). I was around for the rise of the B&W funny animal explosion in comics in the 80s… and I just didn’t understand the attraction to it. Boris’ murderous rampage on those characters in issue #1 made me laugh so hard that I could never let go of the series. In 40+ years time, I have done several purges of my comic collection, where I sell off or trade away 20-50% of my collection… my Boris collection has survived all of them.
I am missing about 4 of the later issues (a couple from the regular series and 2 from the Adventure title). I have seen stuff online that claims there were a couple of one-shots around 2007, but I have never even seen those, so I am not sure if they exist. If I ever get them all rounded up, I am intending to have a two volume, custom bound set made up for myself.
I started the aliens comics recently, love them. Starting predator next.
Aliens is my husbands favorite. I been getting into it the earth wars.
I used to get quite a lot from Dark Horse. It was where I started to move away from DC and Marvel.
I started with Star Wars. John Byrne's Next Men, Sin City, Madman Comics, Flaming Carrot Comics, Grendel.
Most recently I picked up The Witcher Omnibus...
How’s the Witcher?
Wow didn't know these. Thanks fort his informative video!
When Dark Horse did licensed material in high quality that was a genius move. As kids, we looked for stuff around our favorite movies and had been disappointed by bad comicbook adaptations. Than Dark Horse did great Star Wars or Alien Books and we collected them with a passion.
Dark horse got me with conan a couple times being one of my favorite franchises as a kid and alien v predator. The mask was a smidge later. In more recent years I've grabbed a little of goon & hillbilly.
Tales of Jedi is amazing. 5000 years of universe development.
After Marvel sniped Star Wars & Conan from them the only books I'll occasionally buy from them is limited series like Grendel & Resident Alien.
Hellboy, Usagi, Berserk, the art work books such as Zelda and Mario Odyssey are some that make me drawn to Dark Horse lately
I can't comment on Dark Horse though I'm familiar with many of the titles, but I used to hang out at Pegasus books as a kid and play Asteroids. I was in there a lot as my dad had a business almost directly across the street. I had no idea until recently the Pegasus/Dark Horse connection.
I’ve just started using the *Dark* *Horse* digital app, because the 2nd, 3rd & 4th deluxe editions of *Berserk* are taking forever to be delivered to me. So I couldn’t wait any longer & bought vol 4-8 through the app. I’ll probably end up buying 9-12 if the rest of these books take much longer because I read vol 4 & 5 yesterday.
Right now i only read dc and marvel I'm going to start reading dark horse now
Did someone say "Mask"?!?
Illusion Is The Ultimate Weapon! 😄
Correct me if I’m wrong: Looks like the image still doesn’t feature anything from Chadwick’s Concrete. Concrete was basically the poster child for DH for the early years.
My wife is the biggest elfquest fan!
I really like their Conan, Busiek did a great job IMO.
Black Hammer rules
It's funny, I started reading comics years ago. I started as a Conan fan, I collected everything Marvel released, and i mean everything. I personally liked DC comics characters better, so i sorta stuck with DC for years, I ended up getting a Planet Hulk omnibus and loved the story, so I started reading other Marvel comics In between this time, I lucked up and found all three Colossal Conan books Dark Horse released and feel in love, i still to this day believe Dark Horse Conan is my favorite. So because of how much I loved Dark Horses Conan, I started reading other Dark Horse titles, Hellboy is phenomenal, Abe Sapien, and one i just started called Where Monsters lie. Oh, Sin City is another one, theres a few others, but like the mask, I'm forgetting, but i love their comics. Something just feels special about there books, i have hundreds of omnibus from Marvel and DC, but the ones that stick out most in my collection are the Dark Horse ones. The books are made way better than the other guys, but for example I just picked up the Hellboy Monster size book(its huge) the book just feels so well made and its like you feel the love that went into making it. My Colossal Conans feel the same way. My Marvel Zombies omnibus felt like it was falling apart on the first day i got it. Maybe I'm just a fanboy. I've always liked things most others dont even know about. But i guarantee anyone who owns one of their big books will tell you the same. there's just something there. I don't sell any comics but I know plenty of people who do and everyone trys to purchase my Colossal Conan books, the don't even look at all my Savage Sword of Conan or Conan the barbarian collections. There's just something about the comics they release. The art is always different, and the stories are almost always phenomenal. Im a fan for life. Oh, the Godzilla stuff they released was great as well. I also love IDW. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers and GI Joe stuff is great. I started the new Star Trek book they just released, and its really good. The story takes places on the 5th years of the original series of the tv show, if your into Star Trek and looking for a story thats true to the characters and the world it takes place in then check it out. Sorry to whoever reads this, i really love comics and enjoy talking about them.
In my utopian fantasy the mainstream comic book industry would be shaped after "Legend".
I loved the aliens run the star wars run tarzan also I loved that they did a lot of European comics translated thru their venture with saf comics
Bringing Godzilla in to the US comics line again, albeit rather briefly, helped tons of kids looking for Godzilla stuff in a barren pop culture landscape (at the time). Their portfolios in the 80s are some of my most cherished purchases. I saved and saved, and was so happy when they finally arrived.
The Flaming Carrot and Usagi yojimbo, Concrete, and a few others were some of the best comics I had ever read as well. I was only 7 at the time of finding them, but from the moment I saw them, I knew they were different.
Will you ever do a NOW Comics episodes?
Great post
Hell Boy is the poster boy for Dark Horse, after that it is betwen Sin City, Buffy and the Mask
Dark horse always has cool comic books
People forgot the Dark Horse was on a roll with there films from the 90s on: The Mask,Timecop,Barb Wire,Virus,Dr Giggles,Hellboy films,Sin City,300, Mystery Men etc.
Like a few of their titles.
I love some of the comics from Gold Key...why not superheroes, plus tv shows and classic that saved you from reading whole books for school. Like Humpback of Notreeki Dame, Macbeth lol in comic form but with hall you needed for class.
Tower Comics and JC comics had The2swrjij thunder agents.wich has many heroes that paid with their health
.
I love dark horse comics
I thought their biggest manga was Berserk?
John Byrne's Next Men easily my favorite Dark Horse book!
I think I've always had some Dark Horse comics on my pull list. Never a lot, but always some. Lone Wolf & Cub, John Byrne's Next Men and Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor. I bought Nexus once it moved from First. Usagi Yojimbo once Stan moved there. X-Ray Robot and Sword Daughter just wrapped up. Today I just have Norse Mythology and Stranger Things. I've ordered 47 Ronin, but it's been delayed enough that I don't know if they'll ever bother to ship it. To me they are just one of those smaller publishers that are putting out books but aren't in competition with the Big 2.
I really like Concrete! Chadwick's art is amazing. The sad part is Dark Horse has yet to release an omnibus or Library edition.
Chadwick is working on a new story and says once its completed its going to be released alongside with an omnibus. With him being older and a perfectionist, god only knows when that'll be.
Regardless, Concrete is great and even if we dont get another story, I'm happy with what he got. Just wish we'd get a rerelease/collection.
I don't know why, but I always forgot that Hellboy is published by Dark Horse.
Cool
The first comics I ever bought were Tales of the Jedi from Dark Horse. I found them in the early 90s at the age of 13. I had known about DC and Marvel for much longer but my parents were never fans of the comics themselves nor of me buying them. That meant I never really got to go into a comic shop as a kid. One year we were out of town and next to some place we were visiting was some kind of giant flea market. I found a few places with comics there and stumbled across Tales of the Jedi. They let me get a few, I think because they just saw "Star Wars" and were fine with it for whatever reason. I thought they were the coolest thing that ever existed. That led to me getting the Dark Empire trade at some point in the early 90s too. I thought Tales was awesome but DE blew my mind away. It was the most exciting thing I had ever read at that point in my life. It also felt more mature or at least more graphic than anything I had ever read or watched before. At that time, the movies were so far away that we never thought there'd be more. Reading those books made up for the lack of movies for me and in some ways were even cooler.
Please can you teach me how to draw and mention the things I can use and draw
Dark Horse books probably influenced me more then any other publisher over the years. It’s actually my goal to have my book published by them someday.
While I don't have dreams of publishing a book with them, I think I'd agree. DH certainly lead me to a lot of very good manga years before it could be found everywhere, the Legends experiment was fascinating if a little uneven, their (admittedly unsuccessful) World's Greatest range really caught my fancy during its short run, and my appreciation for both Stan Sakai and Adam Warren stem from them as well. I've probably read more DC and Marvel books over the years, but DH has had more of a lasting impact on my tastes in entertainment by far.
The mask played by Jim Carrey in the movie
Ghost,X,Buffy
300, sin city, ninja assassin, hell boy was my favorite adaptation of dark horse
My favorite Dark Horse comic books are
Hellboy & B. P. R. D.
Sin City
The Umbrella Academy
Conan The Barbarian
Timecop
Star Wars
The Goon
Ghost
The Mask
The Aliens was my husband's favorite
"Smoking"....
Wasn't "PITT" Dark horse I can never find any thing I used to own them as a teen
Disney royally screwed Dark Horse when they purchased 20th Century Fox. Add that to Marvel regaining Conan...what's left? Hellboy, Concrete and the Mask. No wonder Dark Horse had to sell.
Empowered was the weirdest book I ever read by dark horse I found out about it because of the UA-camr ComicBookGirl19
Wasn't 30 Days of Night an IDW comic?
It was an IDW comic, but Dark Horse Entertainment helped produce the movie.
Comic, yes, but DH did the 2018 movie and some crossover stuff, eg www.darkhorse.com/Books/21-243/Criminal-Macabre-Final-Night-The-30-Days-of-Night-Crossover-TPB
When it came to current stuff, SIN CITY was a consistent purchase although I searched for MONKEY MAN AND O'BRIEN which I think was created by the former JUSTICE LEAGUE artist, KEVIN MAGUIRE! YES, I saw it as a ripoff of DC's ANGEL AND THE APE but DC wasn't doing anything with Angel and her Simian partner-boyfrisnd so I was going to give the Dark Horse series a shot. I never saw a single issue, perhaps DC had something to do with it?
Getting back to Dark Horse,, I mostly bought their Tradepaperbacks!: LONE WOLF AND CUB, SIN CITY, anything CONAN related and DANGER UNLIMITED,!
I think they may also have publisshed Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan's CURSE OF DRACULA mini series. The two did a new Tomb Of Dracula reunion series that neither was proud of so they wanted another chance with "Drac"! The Dark Horse series featured a new supporting cast and story direction, while the artwork by Colan was colored and printed from his UNINKED pencils and I thought it was brilliant! It might not have sold well because Dracula fans might have been obsessed with the movie BRAM STOKER's DRACULA and anything associated with it, but I highly recommend the Dark Horse series!
Art Adams created Monkeyman and O'Brien.
@@Madbandit77 Hey, thanks a LOT! I never would have imagined it was him! I never saw the actual comic just Miller, Mignola and Byrne's books! Did you read it, was it good? I've still heard nothing about it!
@@pulsarstargrave256 No, but I'm familiar with Adams's works.
@@Madbandit77 I'm also into Adams but I had recently seen a CAPTAIN AMERICA mini series Maguire did and was very impressed with how much his work improved since JL! That may be why I assumed "Monkey Man..." was his!
The talent pool was HUGE in the late 80s and early 90s with new writers, artists and cartoonists, I think it was an amazing time!
I know troy zorel
depredador, terminator y aliens
Mask comics were graphic and scary
Conan and Star Wars was better under them than either time at Marvel
#ComicsbyPerch #DarkHorse
I remember Dark Horse as edgy comics. I wasn’t very interested in most of them. I mean I read the some of Sin City because I was curious but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn’t my thing. I do remember Ah, My Goddess. But I started watching the Anime and gave up on the manga.
When they started Oh My Goddess they had a tendency to skip chapters early on so you weren't getting the whole story. They then cancelled the series after about 120 issues and switched to trades for the complete series (48 volumes). I'd like to read them myself but some of them have been hard to track down. I loved the anime though.
Gotta tip your cap to DH just for being around for 35+ years now. Not sure of what's more disillusioning - their increasing dependence on licensed titles (which they can at least explain by pointing out it pays the bills), or their just-like-everybody-else capitulation to woke horseshit (which by now is like asking your customers to financially contribute to the war on Western civilization, so it's much harder to explain away). But they've published many terrific comics (DARK HORSE PRESENTS - all three versions - is like a how-to clinic for comics anthologies) and - just as or more importantly - some wonderful reprint projects (CREEPY & EERIE, LITTLE LULU, CRIME DOES NOT PAY, many other worthy titles).
Frankly, the most puzzling aspect of DH - considering they've been around as long as they have, weathering many comics-related economic storms, along with the high standard of quality of almost all their titles - is that their percentage of the overall market should be _much_ higher than it is. Even more puzzling/disturbing: that percentage seems to be going _down,_ which - considering that they publish (or have, until recently) the Mignolaverse, Eric Powell's GOON books, BLACK HAMMER, Gaiman's AMERICAN GODS, not to mention a slew of lucrative licensed titles (BUFFY, ALIEN, CONAN, STAR WARS, PREDATOR, and so on) - and their beautifully-done reprint titles - is both depressing & mystifying. How can it be that they continually hover at 3-4% of the total market?
I know no good deed goes unpunished in this world, but it really sucks every time that cynical maxim is proven true. On the other hand, like Fantagraphics they keep right on chugging along somehow, for which I'm grateful. Considering how much I despise Portland and everything that comes out of that part of Oregon, that's really saying something.
Independent comics companies should stick to what they know and stop trying to be as big as the others..