In this portion of the interview, we focus primarily on the non-manga portions of the market. In Part 2, we talk about Dark Horse’s company-owned characters, its creator-owned projects, hosting ComicsPro, and some special projects around a famed anime director. In Part 1, we talked about the state of the market, the changing gender mix and the new aesthetic in American comics, and ask how Dark Horse is changing post-Star Wars.
You mentioned company-owned IP. What kind of titles would those be?
Richardson: We just did a new Mask series. We did our own superhero characters that are running--X, Ghost, those types of titles. We have some individual titles. For example, 47 Ronin was company-owned, we just did a number of projects that we created in-house here, and we will continue to create books and put them out there. Obviously I’m interested in creating content and continue to work on that and we have a growing list of company-owned characters and properties and a number of them that are about to be included in our Dark Horse Entertainment projects.
For Entertainment we’re working with a number of creators, we have a number of announcements about projects. As you know, I don’t really promote our Dark Horse Entertainment side that hard because I always feel that it creates suspicion in our motives for publishing creator-owned work, so we don’t push it too hard, but we have about 12 projects (some filming now) in some area of moving forward in development, and moving forward to actually being filmed.
You talked about your creator-owned material being the core of the company. Miller’s not active these days, but Mignola is. Who area the next generation of creators at Dark Horse?
Richardson: Of course with Mike we have the new Frankenstein series which is going to be super-hot (see "'Frankenstein Underground' Miniseries by Mike Mignola"). It was one of the big topics at ComicsPro. We have Brian Wood bringing out Rebels. We have Lady Killer coming out, we hope to have new announcement about that. We have EI8HT which has gotten great response (see "Dark Horse's 12 Title Round-Up").
We have a number of new creator-owned projects that we’ll be announcing which we think are powerful and exciting. We have a new series of manga announcements, some big titles that we’ve worked hard at getting as Michael and Carl are here chomping at the bit to tell you but I will not let them release it until we get everything done. We have new licensed material that when you hear you’ll say, "Oh, that’s what he was talking about." We have some great announcements on licensed material that are going to be big projects.
You mentioned Matt Kindt, would he be another one in this next generation of creators?
Richardson: Yes, Matt has several books out there. Matt has a very individualistic style, he’s very stylized in his artwork, very different than anyone else. His stories are definitely compelling. Mind MGMT we have with Ridley Scott’s company right now and we’re very excited about it (see "'Mind MGMT' Optioned").
It’s interesting, because you look at traditional books that the studios come after, and Matt’s art style is anything but traditional, and yet we had numerous companies all bidding on that particular project almost immediately. And of course 3 Story we set up at Warner Bros. almost immediately, so Matt’s had tremendous success with his creator-owned projects. He’s becoming a very big star. We’re very excited about Matt’s work and we have a number of projects coming from Matt.
Michael Gombos: One of the great things about Mind MGMT is when people hear comic book movie, they think superhero movie and that is a very limited idea of the creativity that’s coming out of comic books. You have a great original idea like Mind MGMT, which is not a traditional comic book, and people say, "Oh, this would be great in another medium." That makes us really proud, to have published a book like that.
Richardson: We have Shaun Simon doing Neverboy that’s about to come out. We have Joelle Jones and Jamie Rich doing Lady Killer, we have Brian Wood’s The Massive. EI8HT, which just came out and is getting a lot of attention by Rafael [Albuqueque] and Mike Johnson.
There’s a number of books that are coming out and are getting attention. We put out a number of creator-owned books last year that sort of got lost, so we’re really re-thinking how we approach retailers, the books that we’re doing, and try to make sure that we put out some strong titles that retailers can sell. Obviously every few years we completely re-think our line and we are doing that now.
We had noticed that last year there were a lot of creator-driven titles coming through from Dark Horse and agree that it’s hard to get visibility. Do you think part of that is a format thing? Would those same titles be perceived differently if they came out first as graphic novels instead of first as a periodical?
Richardson: They could have. That might have been a different way to go because maybe some of those titles would have been better as original graphic novels, not generally your mainstream comic book material, but we’re listening to retailers and have been working on rethinking our line. You’ve seen some of the efforts.
One of the biggest books that’s gotten huge press is Fight Club 2 (see "Dark Horse to Publish 'Fight Club' Sequel Comic"). That’s going to be a monster book for us. We saw that at ComicsPro; Chuck [Palahniuk] was there personally promoting the book. Chuck is directly involved with retailers promoting the book and he’s a big personality out there and really pushing his book, which from all indications is going to be a huge hit. We’re using Fight Club 2 as one of our Free Comic Book Day offerings and it’s shattering all records for biggest offering we’ve ever had.
ComicsPRO’s Annual Meeting recently took place in Dark Horse’s home city; how was that (see "ComicsPRO Meeting Up 21%")?
Richardson: There’s a general enthusiasm. Obviously the people who will spend the money to go to something like ComicsPro, you’re talking really involved and progressive retailers, retailers who really want to be able to grow their business. It’s great to be able to sit down with 200 retailers like that and get feedback. We learned lot of consistent information about things they’d like to see, so obviously we’re going to try and put it into play this upcoming year. It’s really one of the most valuable (I guess you’d call it a convention) comics gatherings for us. Most of the publishers are there. We had our time and we got to announce some big projects and let some retailers meet creators. And you know, retailers love to meet the creators. They love to have a chance to sit down and talk with them and ask them questions that si tting behind a store counter (which I did for long time) you don’t always get that opportunity when you’re ordering books. It’s just a great event.
Richardson: Yes, it’s great because instead of spending money traveling we created as many goodies for the retailers as we could. At the end one of the prominent retailers came over to me and said, "This is great. Now I’ll be able to pay for my trip here because there were lots of variants, lots of goodies." At the Fight Club 2 presentation, Chuck [Palahniuk] gave 200 lifelike facsimile severed arms that he signed for the people in attendance. And that went viral. If you notice, depending on which one you saw, all the retailers held up the severed arms except Chuck who held up his own arm.
Horn: There’s one more thing I’d like to say about our manga. It’s something I’m in the thick of right now. We’ve been doing this sort of Satoshi Kon program. He was one the great anime directors who died very unexpectedly of cancer when he was 46. It was a tremendous blow to the medium, but a lot people don’t know that before he became an anime director, he first went pro as a manga artist and we have been publishing a number of his works from back then: Satoshi Kon’s OPUS, which really comes off like an unmade film, and just recently, Seraphim. Seraphim is a really amazing thing because creatively it’s done by both Satoshi Kon and the director of Ghost in the Shell, Mamoru Oshii. I can’t think of a single other case where two such talented film directors collaborated together to make a manga. It’s really a chance to see these unmade and unreleased works by these creators.
We’re also putting out an art book with all of Satoshi Kon’s films, the illustrations he did for the movies (see "'The Art of Satoshi Kon'"). That’s going to have a tribute in it from Darren Aronofsky who is a big fan of Satoshi Kon and wrote a condolence letter to Mr. Kon’s producer when he died. We are also translating all of Mr. Kon’s storyboard notes and his comments on his illustrations. This will be a chance for fans to see how he thought about his own filmmaking. Obviously at Dark Horse one of our great ambitions is to work with the great creators and we are happy to be able to do so with Satoshi Kon, even if it has to be after he’s passed away. We’re very honored to release it.
Richardson: And speaking of Japanese material, 47 Ronin, by Mike Richardson and Stan Sakai, was just put on the national library teen readers list (see "YALSA Top Ten Graphic Novels for Teens").
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