With two successful movies and a plethora of acclaimed comic series under his belt it appears Mike Mignola's Hellboy is one of Dark Horse's most noteworthy properties.
Mignola and his demonic tough guy creation have been at the publisher since the early 90s. As Dark Horse celebrates 25 years of publishing comics including Star Wars, Aliens and The Mask, Mignola recounts his favourite moment connected with the Oregon-based company.
He said: "Long story short, a bunch of us were at a party, we approached Mike Richardson and said we all wanted to do our new creator-owned books for Dark Horse, we wanted a separate imprint.
" And we wanted the best creator-owned deal Dark Horse had going. Now I was in good company - Frank Miller, Art Adams, Dave Gibbons, John Byrne etc. - and it would make sense for Dark Horse to cut those guys that kind of deal and look at it as a pretty safe investment.
"They all had giant commercial books to their credit. But me? I had just drawn what I think may be the only Aliens comic Dark Horse produced that didn't make a dime.
"I had a couple of moderately successful books in the past but not many - and there was no reason to think that, left to my own devices, I was going to come up with another one.
"Mike said yes to us at once, then asked me what I was doing. I said:"'Hellboy," and he said okay and that was it.
"At least that's the way I remember it. I know he didn't ask me what Hellboy was about. I don't know if I had a sales pitch ready, but I'm sure I was expecting some kind of discussion.
"I mean you don't just plop out the name Hellboy without some variation of "What the hell is that?" coming back at you.
"I know that no other publisher would have taken it without some idea of what it was going to be. The truth is Mike had a lot more faith in me than I had in myself. I appreciate that."
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