Dark Horse Rising: It's No Longer Just A DC And Marvel Universe

The Golden Age of comics was dominated by DC Comics, home to Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. The Silver Age belonged to Marvel with Spiderman, the Hulk, Fantastic 4 and Captain America.

Does the third age of comics belong to Dark Horse?

Dark Horse at this point is hardly a spring chicken; in 2007 the Oregon based publisher will turn 21 and the party is just getting started.

Dark Horse over its history has published a long list of titles that are licensed from others including "Star Wars," "Conan," "Aeon Flux," "Serenity" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." It has also produced its fair share of creator-owned content with titles such as "Hellboy," Frank Miller's "Sin City" and Stan Sakai's "Usagi Yojimbo."

As with its larger rivals at DC and Marvel Comics, Dark Horse has spawned its own reel of big-screen movies as well. Dark Horse Entertainment has produced such cult classics as "The Mask" (originally a Dark Horse comic book) and "Hellboy," and is now gearing up for this year's release of "300" based on a Frank Miller Dark Horse comic of the same name.

It's All About The Readers

Could Dark Horse Comics continue its ascent and end up as the top comic book publisher ahead of Marvel and DC? It's a question we posed to Randy Stradley, vice-president of publishing at Dark Horse Comics.

"Who wouldn't love to be Number 1? On the other hand, the number three position isn't so bad," Stradley told TwitchGuru. "While comics will always be the core of our business, that fact that we're not a "big" comics company allows us the flexibility to do lots of other things - like publish non-comics books and novels, make toys and lots of other products, have more of a say in how our comics get turned into movies and TV shows, etc. It's fun to be able to indulge!"

Not only is it fun to indulge, apparently it has also been a critical factor in the success and survival of Dark Horse Comics over the last 20 plus years. The major key to Dark Horse's long term success according to Stradley is the simple fact that Dark Horse never forgot about the basics of the business: Dark Horse customers are readers, and that Dark Horse's job is always about entertaining the readers with good stories.

"I look back on some of the sales 'bubbles' through which the market has passed since we started, and I can see a number of places where we missed the chance to jump on the wagon and take some short term profits," Stradley mused. "On the other hand, our competitors who did cash in on the temporary trends suffered once the bubbles burst. And, most of them aren't around anymore.

"As long as we keep our readers long term interests in mind, I believe we'll continue to have the long term success we've had," he added.