Things from Another World
| Mike Richardson | |
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Richardson at the New York Comic Con
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| Born |
June 29, 1950 Milwaukie, Oregon |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Writer, Publisher |
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Notable works
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Mike Richardson (born June 29, 1950) is an American publisher, writer, and Emmy-winning producer. In 1986, he founded Dark Horse Comics, an award winning international publishing house located in Milwaukie, Oregon. Richardson is also the founder and President of the Things From Another World retail chain and president of Dark Horse Entertainment, which has developed and produced numerous projects for film and television based on Dark Horse properties or licensed properties.
In addition, he has written numerous graphic novels and comics series, including The Secret, Living with the Dead, and Cut as well as co-authoring two non-fiction books: Comics Between the Panels and Blast Off!.
Mike Richardson was born June 29, 1950 in Portland, Oregon. His family moved to Milwaukie, a suburb of Portland, in 1955. He is a graduate of Portland State University, where he majored in art and played for the university basketball team.
While in college, Richardson built a list of clients as a freelance artist and had planned on starting an art agency under the name Dark Horse Graphics. In 1980, Richardson quit his job producing art and designing products for a furniture company located in Portland and moved to Bend, Oregon with his wife, Karie, and their newborn daughter, Michelle. He used a credit card with a $2,500.00 limit to open a small, pop culture retail store. The store’s name, Pegasus Fantasy Books, was chosen off a list of twenty suggestions he submitted to the State of Oregon when applying for a DBA registration. The store opened for business on January 1, 1980. After a name change to Things From Another World in 1993, the original store grew into a chain with as many as eleven locations in three states, including Universal Studio’s CityWalk in Los Angeles and Sony’s Metreon in San Francisco. The success of the on-line TFAW retail site led to a decision to limit expansion plans and, reduce the number of brick-and-mortar locations, in favor of increased emphasis toward on-line sales.
Richardson frequently hosted writers and artists at signings in his retail stores. He repeatedly heard these creators complain that they did not own or control the characters they created, a general practice continued from the industry’s earliest days. An idea began to form in his mind about creating a comics publishing company that offered ownership to those creating intellectual properties. Dark Horse Comics was born focusing on the rights of comics creators, and with the help of friend and writer Randy Stradley, released its first publication, Dark Horse Presents #1, in July 1986. Richardson paid 100% of the book’s profits to the creators featured in the book. Hoping to sell 10,000 copies in order to break even, DHP #1 topped the 50,000 sales mark. The company quickly grew from there. Paul Chadwick’s Concrete graduated from the pages of DHP into its own title, and became a critical, as well as financial, success. Many of the titles and characters created in the early days of Dark Horse were created, written, or plotted by Richardson and Stradley.
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