BW Media Spotlight

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?

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