In 1986, the first issue of Dark Horse Presents was shown to one of the first publishers of indie comics in the seventies, Star*Reach’s Mike Friedrich. He was impressed. “This is going to sell through the roof.” Why? “Because there’s a guy holding a huge gun on the cover,” he said.
Crude, but correct. Chris Warner’s Frazettaesque front cover of Black Cross was exciting, rather more so than the back cover, which had a stone-coated guy sitting in his chair going through his mail. That was Concrete. And the book was a hit.
Concrete’s early success was heady. Mike backed it in all kinds of ways. He moved three hundred copies per issue through his store—if only that was a national average! He commissioned a play script based on Concrete’s origin from a local theater group that did radio plays, but it never was performed. I think the troupe broke up.
I once had an inquiry from the President’s Council on Physical Fitness to use Concrete as a sort of spokesman. But they decided on Arnold Schwarzenegger instead, which I can understand.
Some other early memories with Dark Horse come to mind as well:
At one comic con, the first issue of Godzilla arrived from the printers. Disaster. It was a full-color comic, but somehow the black plate was reversed: the lettering and all the lines were white, the empty spaces black. It had to be trashed.
Another time, the first issue of Frank Miller’s Sin City book That Yellow Bastard arrived. It was printed in just two colors, the titular character the only thing that wasn’t black or white. Trouble was, he was kind of green. That too had to be reprinted.
At one early, small convention, Bob Burden (Flaming Carrot) signed at the Dark Horse table. He also set out some of his comics collection he was selling—then asked Richardson to watch them for a bit. He disappeared for I don’t know how long, forcing Mike to be a back-issue dealer for the interim. “I’m trapped,” he said to me.
By way of contrast, last time I talked to Mike he was soon to meet with some venture capitalists. Things change.
Speaking of Asia, Mike nearly died once after eating some bad sushi at a business meal in Japan. Serious bacterial infection. The hazards of success.
Mike Richardson kept the company in his hometown. In fact, the Dark Horse offices took over and remodeled the building that held the drugstore where he bought comics as a kid.
His initial dream, he once told me, was humble. He wanted a drawing board in the back of his comics shop where he’d write and draw children’s books between serving customers. He wasn’t a bad amateur artist in his youth. But somehow the business side mostly took over.
But not completely. He’s written quite a few books, including several personal projects in the last few years—The Atomic Legion, 47 Ronin, Father’s Day (and I expect to be done with our collaboration in about a month, Mike!).
Such are my disjointed recollections. What fun it’s been.
Paul Chadwick