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Dark Horse Comics and Dark Horse
Entertainment are solid examples of how integrity and innovation combined
with a dedication to success can help grow a declining medium and
establish a small, homegrown company as an industry giant.
By the mid-1980s, Mike Richardson had
already established himself as a business leader in the Portland, Oregon
metropolitan area with the successful chain of retail comic-book shops he
founded after graduating from Portland State University. But something was
bothering him–even the best comics his stores carried were below the
standards Richardson believed the comics medium was capable of
maintaining. For an industry that was already half a century old, there
was very little innovation surfacing in the books he sold, and because of
that, this medium that Richardson had loved since his youth was in danger
of crumbling. Television shows that were popular when he was a kid were no
longer filling the nation’s airwaves, so why were caped superheroes who
had been around during his father’s childhood still dominating the world
of comic-book publishing?
Richardson knew that if he expected
anything to change, he’d have to jump in and do it himself. In 1986, he
invested profits from the chain of book stores that would come to be known
nationwide as Things from Another World (the world’s largest
comic-book retail chain), and with that money founded Dark Horse Comics. |
