Scheduling made me late to the discussion on this one, but this is still an issue I have opinions on. If somehow you missed it even though sites like The Hollywood Reporter discussed it (and that’s not one I go to for comic news), Mike Richardson, the founder of Dark Horse Comics, got canned by the people who bought the company from him, some Swedish group called Embracer. So it’s Jim Shooter and Valiant Comics again, after he got ousted by his investors after forming the company…just with more time under Richardson’s belt. Here’s an article from ICv2, a site I do use for comic news.
Shooter got screwed over immediately and I couldn’t find any info that Richardson wasn’t ready to leave. He did sell the company, after all. Richardson was CEO of the company he founded back in 1986, from his comic store in Oregon. Dark Horse is known for creator owned comics that are still owned by their creators and licensing everything from Godzilla to actual manga. (Also, Godzilla manga.) Some of their most beloved work included Star Wars and creating the “Alien Vs. Predator” idea, which was such a huge hit in comics that Hollywood just had to make movies on the concept…and from what I can tell messed the concept up royally. The comics are praised, the movies are not, and I know nothing about the video game because nobody seems to talk about it. All were lost to them when Disney bought the studios that created Star Wars and the two movies, since they had Marvel. And yet some new material is published by companies who aren’t Disney but also not Dark Horse. Disney are run by morons, but that’s another topic.
So now the guy whose vision created Dark Horse, starting as a comic store owner to comic publisher, is gone from the company. Unless he wanted to leave, that seems like a really dumb move. If he did choose to move on that wouldn’t be a firing but rather just him retiring from the company, which is not how I’ve seen it phrased by any of the articles I looked up . Richardson not only founded the company but knew how to keep it successful. They’ve had movies, shows, and even games based on their comics, I’ve not heard a lot of bad things said about Dark Horse versus DC, Marvel, or even Image. He’s not incompetent, and Embracer’s stated reasons to take the company in a new direction sounds like fixing something that isn’t broken. So what’s going on?
According to The Popverse, Embracer released a statement about what their plans are:
In a statement sent out to the media, this move is described as Dark Horse’s new owner’s plan to implement “changes to modernize the business and strengthen collaboration across publishing, games, film, merchandise, and other key areas.” The statement, sent by Dark Horse’s vice president of product development and sales, Randy Lahrman, stresses this leadership change was done in order to “better align Dark Horse within a more connected and forward-looking group structure” within Embracer.
“Our goal is simple: to ensure Dark Horse is positioned for sustained success while continuing to serve creators, partners, and fans at the highest level,” writes Lahrman.
Richardson’s exit as Dark Horse CEO comes five years after he sold Dark Horse to the giant gaming company known as Embracer Group. To replace Richardson, Embracer is bringing over a manager from its newly acquired Middle-earth Enterprises division (think Lord of the Rings) to lead the company on an interim basis. Jay Komas comes to Dark Horse as interim CEO after two years as general manager & head of franchise development for Middle-earth Enterprises, and a resume that includes stints at Google, LucasArts, Activision Blizzard, and EA.
“Jay brings extensive experience with global intellectual properties across games, film, and consumer products,” writes Lahrman. “Over the course of his career, he has held senior leadership roles at Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard, and LucasArts, where he worked with some of the most recognized entertainment brands in the world. His background in managing and expanding IP across multiple categories will be instrumental as we build on Dark Horse’s legacy and strengthen its position in an increasingly connected entertainment landscape.”
A video game guy now in charge of the comic company. It should be noted that Embracer Group is a video game company. However, Richardson was already getting his stuff into other media as well as adapting from said other media, including video games. From Geeks & Gamers:
Dark Horse made itself a publisher that ensured comic book creators would have a share of the profits from their books (and merchandising!) and retain the rights to their stories. As a result, Dark Horse has many original comics from top industry talent, such as Frank Miller’s Sin City, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, and Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo, and lots of them have been adapted as movies; aside from Sin City and Hellboy, there’s The Mask, Timecop, Barb Wire, and the recent Netflix series The Umbrella Academy. It also became the publisher of Mark Millar’s Millarworld books.
Artist depiction of Embracer’s future?
They forgot The Big Guy & Rusty, another Frank Miller creation, which went to animated series, as did The Mask, continuing on from the movie as somehow Stanley got the mask back. Admittedly The Mask was never translated correctly from the books. In the first movie and sequel cartoon series Stanley was a hero trying to control the power of the Mask Of Loki to protect the city, and often losing to his wacky alter-ego until the final act. In the comics, it turned people evil, including Stanley Ipkiss, and “Big Head” would end up in the hands of multiple wrong people after Stanley’s death. (There was a tie-in comic to the cartoon but that’s not in the same continuity as the regular comics despite also being published by Dark Horse.) I can’t really speak to the other adapted comics, some of whom also had video games, while Usagi is tied into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with numerous cartoon appearances and a failed attempt at an original cartoon based on the “Space Usagi” comics.
But it became known for licensing outside IPs and creating comics around them as well. Dark Horse was the home to Star Wars comics for a long time before Marvel got the license when Disney bought Lucasfilm. It also held the license for Evil Dead, with the comics published under the name of the third film in the series, Army of Darkness. After Dynamite Entertainment acquired the Evil Dead rights, Dark Horse’s original series has been republished many times. Dark Horse also published comics based on Alien, Predator, The Terminator, Indiana Jones, Robocop, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Dark Horse even put out a series called Aliens vs. Predator before the concept made it to Hollywood.
No mention of their early manga publishing. I enjoyed Oh My Goddess and the manga adaptation of the movie we know as Godzilla 1985.
Like I said earlier, it was because of the comics that an Alien Vs. Predator franchise was created, and because of Hollywood that the movies failed to live up to the comics. Meanwhile, Dark Horse worked with Star Wars for years when the Expanded Universe was just novels, the occasional video game, and the multimedia “Shadows Of The Empire” project. They produced some fan favorite stories…and also a really lame reason for the Jedi rejecting personal relationships. They’ve gotten more praise than most of the current Marvel output, and the kid titles went to Dark Horse anyway, while Disney rejected their additions to the EU. Marvel gave us…Doctor Aphra and her evil knockoffs of R2 & 3PO. Yay. Even Marvel’s old material from when the movies were coming out aren’t as famous as Dark Horse’s very long run, as they pushed the expanded Star Wars universe more without ruining the original trilogy cast in the process, even when they were there.
This is what confuses me, though. Disney pulled some of their IP and Godzilla ended up with IDW while Evil Dead went to Dynamite, but that wasn’t Richardson’s fault. Disney wanted things closer to home with their replacement continuity and licensing is rarely a long term solution anyway. It’s kind of limiting when you care about doing the source material justice. Everything Embracer Group said they wanted out of Dark Horse, Richardson delivered in the past. I’m not going to read too much into the “modern” thing because even Geeks & Gamers didn’t, and they’re more into the pop culture and culture war side of these discussions than I am. Something they did note, however:
In other words, it’s not about comics but using comics as part of a collaboration between media, like movies and video games, so the Dark Horse CEO can be fired with no big loss to Embracer. And this isn’t surprising, as at the time of the acquisition, Embracer admitted it saw Dark Horse as “attractive for future transmedia exploitation, including creation of new video games.” It sounds like it was never about the comics but about using them to bolster other ventures, like the many video game studios Embracer has acquired over the years, including Gearbox, Saber Interactive, and THQ Nordic. And they want a video games guy mining the IPs for possible adaptations, not a comics guy who cares about the source material.
So it’s not so much about the comics as what the comics can do for their preferred media of choice. How very Hollywood of them. Does that mean the comics will suffer in the name of getting video games out? Acclaim bought Valiant years after Shooter was kicked out and that didn’t save the company. Allegedly the company is back as an indie game supporter, but it’s like Atari isn’t the game company it once was, just a brand for the nostalgic. Valiant also had new owners, Alien Books, but while they seem to be back to form it’s still branding. Acclaim Comics/Valiant Heroes died in a year. If Jay Komas doesn’t respect the comic medium and the spirit of what Dark Horse is, this isn’t going to go well. Embracer may have made a huge mistake here.
BW Media Spotlight 