Star Wars. Conan. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Firefly. Usagi Yojimbo. Alien. Predator.
Did I miss any?
The above is a list of licenses Dark Horse Comics has lost since 2014.
The last two happened just this past week, as Marvel announced Thursday it had acquired the Alien and Predator licenses with an eye toward publishing comics based on them in 2021.
Makes sense, considering Marvel parent Disney owns both franchises as a result of the Fox merger.
Dark Horse Publisher Mike Richardson issued a statement largely to the effect of “Yeah, but it was nice while it lasted,” reminiscing about both licenses’ early successes, and the first time Dark Horse slapped a “Vs.” between them.
This does not leave Dark Horse devoid of licensed comics or otherwise marketable properties. It still has Stranger Things, Critical Role, Minecraft, The Witcher, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra and Plants vs. Zombies. It also has all of Mike Mignola’s properties, Jeff Lemire’s Black Hammer-verse, its Berger Books line of more sophisticated comics, and those gorgeous hardcover art books, a number of which occupy shelf space in my house.
(I’m currently reading “Go Team Venture! The Art and Making of the Venture Bros.” It’s an extremely dense book that will likely take me all summer to finish.)
The point is, comics’ fifth or sixth biggest publisher (depending on the metrics you look at) still has plenty of stuff. And Alien and Predator weren’t necessarily major brands for Dark Horse recently. A hardcover adaptation of the William Gibson version of “Alien 3” logged in at 327 on Diamond Comic Distributors’ book list for 2019, while no Predator comics made the cut in either the floppy or book categories.
Still, it’s more bad news on top of an already awful last couple weeks of comics news. Remember, this follows Dark Horse finally cutting ties with former Editor-in-Chief Scott Allie last week over sexual misconduct allegations that kept turning up like a bad penny. And allegations that former Dark Horse editor Brendan Wright stalked and harassed a woman for over a year. And allegations of racism and abuse against two upper-level employees of Dark Horse retail operation Things from Another World.
And, germane to the original subject of this editorial, Dark Horse also had to cancel an Alien project last year because of last-straw sexual misconduct allegations against writer Brian Wood.
We don’t know yet who will helm the Alien and Predator titles at Marvel, nor whether Marvel has any plans to make the classic film monsters fight each other or the Avengers or Darth Vader or Conan or Ultraman or Warhammer or team up with noted Xenomorph knockoffs the Brood.
What we do know is that it’s still weird that Marvel’s gobbled up all these licenses the past few years but still farms out its all-ages Marvel and Star Wars books to IDW.
But that’s getting a little far afield from the point.
We know Dark Horse has the ability to innovate. It’s why between my son and I, we have four of its Super Mario/Legend of Zelda/Final Fantasy encyclopedia. But after the past couple weeks, it’s become quite clear the company needs to innovate itself some new leadership, and stop enabling abusers.
Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts WMQ&A: The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
