Dark Horse Comics

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. He began envisioning a comics publishing company that offered intellectual property rights to comics creators. Dark Horse Comics was born, and with the help of Richardson's 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.

Over the years, Dark Horse published creator-owned projects such as Frank Miller and Geof Darrow’s Hard Boiled, Miller’s Sin City and 300, Mike Mignola's Hellboy, and Eric Powell’s The Goon. Richardson’s interest in Japanese pop culture led to Dark Horse’s early entry into the American manga scene. The company achieved success with major Japanese titles, including Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's Lone Wolf and Cub, Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira, and Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell. Following these successes, Dark Horse imported Hiroaki Samura's Blade of the Immortal and Kosuke Fujishima's Oh My Goddess! to the United States, where the series have become two of the longest-running Japanese manga titles in the country.

In 1988, Dark Horse introduced a series based on the James Cameron film Aliens. Breaking from comic tradition, the series was presented as a direct sequel, continuing the adventures of the film's main characters and related directly to the film’s plot. This approach was repeated by Dark Horse in subsequent series based on films such as Terminator, Predator, Star Wars, and Aliens vs. Predator. This approach to film properties has become standard in the comics industry. Dark Horse is currently the largest privately owned comics company in North America.

Along with his other activities, Richardson continues to write comics. In 2014, his collaboration with Stan Sakai, 47 Ronin, was placed on the American Libraries Teen Reading List.

Dark Horse Entertainment

Early on, Dark Horse Comics received attention from the film industry, with producers and studios attempting to option the publisher's titles. From the beginning, Richardson's goal was to keep Dark Horse and its creators as involved in the development of its titles for entertainment as possible. It quickly became apparent that the only way to assure involvement was to act as a producer on those projects. In 1989, Richardson met producer Larry Gordon, who had heard about the company through his creative executive, Lloyd Levin. Gordon offered him the chance to get involved with a small horror film he was developing, As a result, Richardson set up Dark Horse Productions, later to become Dark Horse Entertainment, and received a co-producer credit on Many Cota’s Dr. Giggles. Two of Richardson's creations, The Mask and Timecop, followed in 1994 and both topped the box office charts. In 2008, Richardson received an Emmy as Producer of the John Landis directed documentary, Mr. Warmth, The Don Rickles Project. Richardson and DHE have been involved in producing more than 30 film and television projects since 1992.

Comics

Books

• Comics: Between the Panels (ISBN 1-56971-344-8)
• Blast Off: Rockets, Rayguns, Robots and Rarities (ISBN 978-1-61655-009-7)

Film

Year	Film	Writer	Producer	Executive Producer	Director	Notes
1992	Dr. Giggles		N		Manny Coto	Co-producer
1994	The Mask			N	Chuck Russell
	Timecop	N		N	Peter Hyams
1995	Enemy			N	Michael Katleman	Television film
1996	Barb Wire		N		David Hogan	Nominated — Razzie Award for Worst Picture
1999	Virus			N	John Bruno
	Mystery Men		N		Kinka Usher
2003	Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision	N			Steve Boyum	Direct-to-DVD
2004	Hellboy		N		Guillermo del Toro
	Alien vs. Predator			N	Paul W. S. Anderson
2005	Monarch Of The Moon			N	Richard Lowry
	Splinter			N	Michael Olmos
	Son of the Mask			N	Lawrence Guterman
2006	Hellboy: Sword of Storms			N	Tad Stones Phil Weinstein	Television film Nominated — Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program
	Driftwood		N		Tim Sullivan
2007	Hellboy: Blood and Iron			N	Tad Stones Phil Weinstein	Television film
	My Name Is Bruce			N	Bruce Campbell
	30 Days of Night			N	David Slade
	Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project		N		John Landis	Emmy Award winner
2008	Hellboy II: The Golden Army		N		Guillermo del Toro
2013	R.I.P.D.		N		Robert Schwentke
2016	The Legend of Tarzan			N	David Yates
2019	Polar			N	Jonas Åkerlund
	Hellboy		N		Neil Marshall
TBA	Hellboy: The Crooked Man		N		Brian Taylor

Television

Year	Series	Executive Producer	Notes
1995–1997	The Mask: Animated Series	N
1997–1998	Timecop	N
1999–2001	Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot	N
2012	Dark Horse Motion Comics	N	Internet series
2015–2017	Dark Matter	N
2019–present	The Umbrella Academy	N
2021	Coyote	N
2021–present	Resident Alien	N
2022	Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles	N