Dark Horse

Dark Horse was started in 1986 by Mike Richardson, who funded it out of the comic shops he already ran in Oregon. The pitch was the same one Image would make six years later — creators keep their work — but arrived quietly and years earlier.

The company built a reputation on two things: creator-owned books such as Hellboy and Sin City, and licensed comics handled with more care than the category usually gets. It held the Star Wars comics licence from 1991 to 2014, and published Aliens and Predator comics that shaped how those films were continued in print.

Dark Horse was acquired by the Swedish group Embracer in 2021 and continues to publish from Oregon.