This week, Dark Horse has announced that its once popular anthology series, Dark Horse Presents is returning in 2011!
Dark Horse Presents was once a big deal in comics. It ran for 14 years, from 1986 to 2000, and many popular titles made their first appearance in Dark Horse Presents in serialized form. Titles like Paul Chadwick's Concrete and Frank Miller's Sin City. I was an avid reader of Dark Horse Presents in the 90s. It was as much responsible for getting me to expand my comic book horizons beyond DC and Marvel as much as any book out there.
As you can see from the cover images above, Concrete will be making its return to Dark Horse Presents, and you'll get your first look at Frank Miller's Xerxes there as well.
The comic book market is A LOT different than it was 10-15 years ago. These days, an anthology book usually meets a wall of indifference and then a swift death. Will the return of Dark Horse's longest running title buck that trend?
There promises to be more Dark Horse Presents news throughout the week. Check back here for the latest news.
Update - Here are two pages from the Concrete story from Dark Horse Presents #1:
Update - Howard Chaykin will also be writing and drawing a story in Dark Horse Presents #1. Here's an unlettered preview page:
Update - Neal Adams will also be writing and drawing a story in Dark Horse Presents #1. Here's an unlettered preview page:
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I will be picking this up. I love anthologies, which makes me sad the market can’t support them.
I’ll probably be getting this.
How much will DHP 80 page book from DH cost in 2011?
Matthew
Hmm…I’ll try out at least the first few issues, looks fun.
Added to pull list; dropped almost everything else.
DHP ruled.
The only sticking point will be price, for me. Everything else about this sounds like a slice of fried gold though.
anthologies are always a tough sell even when comics sales are great. comics are selling less and less every month and DH launches an anthology. i am a big fan of DH and will be buying this; i hope this succeeds for them.
You had me at Concrete…
i’m very interested, but price will be a huge factor. Lets hope it will be reasonable…
This is good. 80 pages? That’s what I like to hear. I doubt the cost will be prohibitive considering it’s size — it’s a matter of whether or not the market embraces it.
Anthologies aren’t my thing, but DHP always had great stories from small time and indie folks who still had great aesthetic for mainstream success. Hopefully that continues.
@NaveenM — Price will be a HUGE factor in whether or not the market embraces it. If you calculate how much per page comics are priced at this thing should be around 8-10 bux…i’m hoping its less that that.
@wallythegreenmonster — From my own experience, one of the biggest pieces of the pie in printing is the set-up cost. The per page count isn’t as much of a factor. So once you reach a certain page threshold, additional pages don’t cost as much.
Of course, I don’t know comic printing costs, but I think this would explain why a trade with 5 issues can sell for $9.99 (where you’re looking at 110 pages).
@NaveenM Those trades only sell at that price point to try to entice people to try a volume 1 of something.
Exciting news! I love this format.
Is there any more info on whether or not this is going to be monthly or quarterly or whatever?
@NaveenM –agree with you on your points. I’d also add that the second big piece is paper choice. Comics use the lowest grades of paper available albeit Darkhorse tends to choose nicer stocks in their more popular titles.
i’m a graphic designer and i’ve sent lots of jobs to print so i have a lot of skepticism when it comes to the comic industry page count/price point ratios and justifications.
DC recently put out those 100 page special issues (I got the Superman one) and i think it was around $8 bucks. It was a bit steep and thats why i didn’t buy more of them. I’d hope that Darkhorse can come under that price point for this. I think that will be the biggest factor in it being a success. I’m really looking forward to it…
I’d gladly take cheap paper or black and white for a cheaper publication. Then again, if I can cut out three or four titles for a shorter magazine where it’s collected, I’d take that too.
The DC 80-Page Giants are about $6.That’s not bad, but a $6 monthly would outlive its welcome very fast. Since this is an anthology and will likely stories that aren’t connected, or very loosely connected, I think this would work best on a quarterly release schedule.
@Slockhart – i was talking about the DC Comics presents specials that have been coming out (several this week as well) They are 96 pages for 7.99 and those are mostly all reprints! Darkhorse runs a bit more than the Big 2 so its gonna be interesting…
CONCRETE!
This is great news! Let’s not forget that John Byrne’s Next Men were introduced in DHP.
hell yes! The DHP on myspace was Ok, but this will be absolutely awesome! I actually told my LCS months ago to keep an out for this for me. Very exciting stuff! I always wondered if and when we would see more Concrete.
about the potential pricing: Based off of last week’s Savage Sword 80-pager anthology, DHP will probably be 7.99 as well. Still totally worth it by today’s standards!
is it going to just be two 30ish page stories? Or are there other things in there too?
Either way I’ll probably pick it up
They put this on their app and release day and date? Then I’m in.
Looking forward to them.
Updated with a page from Howard Chaylkin’s story.
@wallythegreenmonster – Yeah, I think paper stock is a key factor here. Didn’t they use a more traditional book stock for “Parker: The Hunter”? I thought that worked well (though yes, it was just two colors).
@conor – True, those first trades are priced to draw in readers. And it works on me!
Updated with a page from Neal Adams.
Adams. Miller. Chadwick. Darrow. Ellison. Chaykin. How can you not at least check it out? I’m in !
This looks like a great idea. I’ll take a look but it really depends on the week, how much I’m spending that day, etc., as to if I actually throw down and pick it up. But some of the best comics have come out in this format in the past 20 years I feel. I really hope it can sustain itself. On that note, I may buy it, just so I can say I did everything I could to help support this endeavor.