Maverick (Dark Horse)

Maverick is a defunct imprint of Dark Horse Comics, created in 1999 by editor Diana Schutz for creator-owned works, to "provid[e] a home for creator-owned properties—providing a certain identity to those creator-owned labors of love that distinguishes them from Dark Horse's licensed books." The imprint, Dark Horse's second attempt at a creator-owned imprint (after "Legend") was relatively short-lived, publishing fewer than fifty issues/titles between 1999 and 2002.

Schutz instigated the "Maverick" line at Dark Horse Comics in July 1999 for the purpose of "provid[ing] a kind of identity or specific line for those sorts of individual creator visions." Part of the purpose of having a separate imprint was to noticeably separate Dark Horse's output into discrete sections, and, as Schutz notes:

Having a section in Diamond Previews can't help but solidify that [separate] identity a little bit. It reminds people that Dark Horse really does publish creator-owned books... people often see the company primarily in light of our licensed books, and Lord knows we do publish a lot of them, but the roots of this company are with creator-owned books and Maverick was an attempt to underline that aspect.

The aim of the Maverick line was to "push the medium a little bit," although Schutz recognized that such titles are often a hard sell. To help address this, the Maverick Annual anthologies (published from 2000 as Dark Horse Maverick and later under such subtitles as Happy Endings and AutobioGraphix) put newer creators (Farel Dalrymple, Gilbert Austin, Jason Hall, Matt Kindt) alongside established names such as Frank Miller and Sam Kieth.

The first title published was Frank Miller's Sin City: Hell and Back—Miller also having suggested the "Maverick" name—and was edited by Schutz. The first year's output saw Maverick "consolidate... [Dark Horse's] creator-owned, creator-produced titles under one roof—such diverse titles as Mike Mignola's Hellboy, Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, Paul Chadwick's The World Below, Matt Wagner's Grendel, and Sergio Aragonés' (and Mark Evanier's) Groo, to mention just a few," bringing in new titles such as Rich Tommaso's The Horror of Collier County and providing a home for such projects as P. Craig Russell's adaptation of Der Ring des Nibelungen.

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