Geniuses Celebrating Comics

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Geniuses Celebrating Comics

04/24/2012 1:08pm

As Dark Horse’s youngest imprint, the Dark Horse Originals line continues to expand and evolve, luring more innovative creators into its stable and changing to meet their visions. While a nice batch of graphic novels and trade collections will add some new spice and psychedelic verve to the lineup this year—like Jeff Parker and Erika Moen’s Bucko webcomics collection and the highly anticipated Sacrifice hardcover from Sam Humphries—the line is also branching out with new comic-book offerings.

What makes the Dark Horse Originals line so exceptional is that it was put together with creators in mind, and it continues to be creator driven—in not only the unique content that’s explored in every book, but in format decisions also. While Dark Horse Originals projects have varied wildly in size, length, and subject matter, all of the titles in this imprint have been either original graphic novels or collections from distinct creative voices—but never monthly comics.

Mike Richardson, our publisher, has always wanted the Dark Horse Originals line to celebrate variety, and he listened to the creators who wanted to see their serialized comics added. For Matt Kindt, a creator who’s had his work published in minicomic, prestige one-shot, and graphic-novel formats, having a creator-owned comic-book series debut this year is a dream come true. MIND MGMT is his first monthly comic series.

At the core of our current, Dark Horse Originals–focused “Genius Redefining Genre” campaign are creators Peter Bagge, Gilbert Hernandez, and Matt Kindt—and their new comic-book series Reset, Fatima: The Blood Spinners, and MIND MGMT. With these sizzling monthlies, all launching in consecutive months this spring, Gilbert and Peter are treading on familiar, beloved “pamphlet paths,” having worked extensively—over about three decades—with both stapled magazine formats and stapled comic-book formats. Matt Kindt is getting to play in an entirely new arena, though, and it’s obvious that he’s excited about it. He’s cramming some fun features into his comic pages, including some bonus treats that are comic-book exclusives and will not be duplicated in the eventual trade collection.

These gentlemen are also having fun twisting, mashing up, and skewering the genres that they’ve chosen to play with—not only having a great time, but making certain genres fun again for themselves and readers alike.

For Peter, it’s the science-fiction/fantasy trope of time travel and being able to reinsert yourself into past events—but how many times can protagonist Guy Krause relive certain horrible moments from his life before he gives up or snaps? (Or will he somehow be able to change his present-day train wreck of a life?) Peter sees that it’s not only the trip that’s interesting, but what his main character learns from each trip.

The zombie apocalypse genre (one of my personal favorites) gets an exciting overhaul in Gilbert’s timeless style. Gilbert’s pages exude true paranoia, feature splashy, over-the-top gore, and promise an intriguing premise for the zombie outbreak.

Matt’s chosen genre is spy fiction, and as readers will see, every page of MIND MGMT will cleverly convey new clues and “field guide” notes along the borders, outside the live art, as the main story unspools.

At a time when the comic-book format deserves a resurge—when too many readers are waiting for trade collections—these three creators give lapsed believers three darn good reasons to return to the racks for monthly fixes of comic fiction.

Allowing our Dark Horse Originals line to grow and revel in every type of format and kind of story that our creators want to tell, we’re staying true to the creator-driven mission that started this company and is embedded into the simple Dark Horse Originals motto of “great creators, original visions.” When Mike Richardson talked about the line in another blog piece from last year, he wrote, “You’ll meet creators attempting to stretch the traditional definitions of comics and others working their magic within familiar boundaries. Well-known talents will mix with amazing new discoveries. Nothing is certain except the excitement and surprises coming your way.”

There are bound to be surprises this weekend at Portland’s Stumptown Comics Fest, where Peter Bagge, Jeff Parker, and Erika Moen will be on a Dark Horse Originals panel together (April 28, 5 to 6 p.m.—I’ll be there, too, to make sure that Parker and Moen’s shenanigans don’t get too out of hand!), and where Dark Horse will be proudly promoting its Dark Horse Originals line. You can also support the line and these great creators by picking up their new monthlies. Reset #1 is on sale now, MIND MGMT will launch on May 23, 2012, and Fatima: The Blood Spinners begins on June 20, 2012.

Enjoy these new series—and please come visit the Dark Horse booth at the Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, Oregon! (We’re booth #107!)

—Philip R. Simon

editor

Dark Horse Comics

Geniuses Celebrating Comics

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