Twenty-Five Years Young! 9/1/10

With 2011 just around the corner, Dark Horse Comics has two important landmark anniversaries looming. First and foremost is Dark Horse’s own twenty-fifth year of publishing. Sure, there are other companies that have been around longer, but of the hundred or so comics companies that sprang up in the boom time of the mid-1980s, Dark Horse is the only one that’s still around—and not simply surviving, but thriving. We’re twenty-five years young, and feeling our oats, folks.

Next year also marks the twentieth anniversary of our involvement with Star Wars, a film and (now, with The Clone Wars) television franchise that can be said, without hyperbole, to have changed the world. And in the comics arena, that galaxy far, far away has been the birthplace of literally hundreds of stories—from 1991’s Dark Empire to this year’s Legacy: War; from 1993’s Tales of the Jedi to next month’s Knight Errant.

It’s only natural, I suppose, that anniversaries become occasions for looking back. But, as the saying goes, “ ‘Remember when’ is the lowest form of conversation.” So, rather than peering through rose-colored glasses at what has been, let’s turn our gaze toward the future. If you’re a Star Wars fan—or even a comics fan with a passing familiarity with the Star Wars mythos—it is a bright future indeed.

For instance, in addition to the previously mentioned and imminent Knight Errant and Legacy: War series, we will be releasing at least eight—count ’em, eight!—additional new Star Wars series or story arcs in the coming year!

Some of these new series (or returning “old” series) you may already have heard about. That Dark Times will return was mentioned in the letters column of issue #17 of that series. And at Comic-Con International in San Diego, as well as at the massive Star Wars Celebration show in Orlando, we revealed news about the upcoming Darth Vader [subtitle coming soon] miniseries by Haden Blackman and Rick Leonardi, and the fact that Tom Taylor and Chris Scalf are turning Blood Ties into a semiregular “series of miniseries” telling stories about famous (and infamous) related characters in the Star Wars galaxy.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! It’s still too soon to reveal what other surprises we have in the works, but trust me when I say that in the coming months you won’t have time for any of those “remember when” conversations because you’ll be too busy saying to one another, “Look what’s coming next!”