Publishers Weekly Profiles Upcoming Dark Horse Younger Readers Titles!

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Publishers Weekly Profiles Upcoming Dark Horse Younger Readers Titles!

08/26/2014 10:42am

Dark Horse Looks to Add More Kids' Graphic Novels!

By Calvin Reid

Looking to build on the success of its kids-focused graphic novel collections Plants vs. Zombies and Avatar: The Last Airbender, Dark Horse Comics is expanding the number of all-ages graphic novels it publishes each year. The house is launching four new titles in 2015 with more kids graphic novels planned.

Dark Horse announced plans to publish Rexodus, a sci-fi tale based on the notion that rather than becoming extinct, dinosaurs actually left the earth and resettled on another planet, created by Steelhouse Productions. Dark Horse also plans to republish Courageous Princess, an acclaimed fantasy graphic novel by Rod Espinosa originally published in 1999 by Antarctic Press; Veda: Assembly Required, the story of girl raised by robots, by Samuel Teer and Hyeondo Park; and The Return of the Gremlins, a new hardcover that collects the comics periodicals adapted from the Roald Dahl kids classic, written by Dark Horse publisher/founder Mike Richardson and drawn by Dean Yeagle.

The books will be published in 2015 and edited by DH editor Sierra Hahn. “I’ve always been interested in editing more titles for kids and teens. I’m not alone in that I first fell in love with the medium as a child and it led to an enduring love for reading,” Hahn told PW. “My experience was that there weren’t a wealth of acclaimed comics suitable for a 12 to 16 year old. That’s really changed in the last decade with more offerings available to a larger age group thanks in part to the successes of Scholastic’s Graphix and First Second,” she said. “While Dark Horse has always published quality kids comics—Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson’s Beasts of Burden and Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo are surely some of the greatest—it took groundbreaking successes like Avatar:The Last Airbender to really expand that audience and get all eyes on us for our quality kid’s titles,” Hahn said.

Dark Horse announced plans to publish Rexodus, a sci-fi tale based on the notion that rather than becoming extinct, dinosaurs actually left the earth and resettled on another planet, created by Steelhouse Productions. Dark Horse also plans to republish Courageous Princess, an acclaimed fantasy graphic novel by Rod Espinosa originally published in 1999 by Antarctic Press; Veda: Assembly Required, the story of girl raised by robots, by Samuel Teer and Hyeondo Park; and The Return of the Gremlins, a new hardcover that collects the comics periodicals adapted from the Roald Dahl kids classic, written by Dark Horse publisher/founder Mike Richardson and drawn by Dean Yeagle.

The books will be published in 2015 and edited by DH editor Sierra Hahn. “I’ve always been interested in editing more titles for kids and teens. I’m not alone in that I first fell in love with the medium as a child and it led to an enduring love for reading,” Hahn told PW. “My experience was that there weren’t a wealth of acclaimed comics suitable for a 12 to 16 year old. That’s really changed in the last decade with more offerings available to a larger age group thanks in part to the successes of Scholastic’s Graphix and First Second,” she said. “While Dark Horse has always published quality kids comics—Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson’s Beasts of Burden and Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo are surely some of the greatest—it took groundbreaking successes like Avatar:The Last Airbender to really expand that audience and get all eyes on us for our quality kid’s titles,” Hahn said.

“It’s important to cultivate young comics readers, so we’re looking to create new books and launch new titles” Richardson told PW during a phone interview. Richardson noted the success of Dark Horse series like Plants vs. Zombies (DH has shipped more than 300,000 copies), which is based on the videogame, and the bestselling series Avatar: The Last Airbender, written by National Book Award nominated cartoonist Gene Luen Yang and drawn by Gurihiru.

Check out the full story at Publishers Weekly!

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Publishers Weekly Profiles Upcoming Dark Horse Younger Readers Titles!

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