Oregon’s Dark Horse: How a comics company shaped Milwaukie

Over 40 years, Mike Richardson built a small comic book company in his hometown of Milwaukie, Oregon, into a multinational phenomenon. He expected to run Dark Horse Comics forever.

“I thought I’d die in that job,” Richardson told OPB.

Dark Horse, Mike Richardson and the city of Milwaukie have a shared history dating back decades.

As Dark Horse grew from an upstart comics company in a small town to a nine-figure global brand with a Netflix show and blockbuster movies, it also helped shape that small town. But in 2021, after three and a half decades running Dark Horse, Richardson sold his final stake in the company to Embracer, a gaming company based in Karlstad, Sweden, known for sweeping up intellectual properties.

Embracer initially kept Richardson on as CEO and continued producing comics from its longtime headquarters on Main Street in Milwaukie. Then, earlier this year, the multimedia conglomerate shocked the comics world by ousting Richardson.

Dark Horse’s future in Milwaukie is now in doubt. But founder Mike Richardson hopes he and the company can leave a lasting mark on his hometown.

“They spent a lot of money,” Richardson said of Embracer. “They can do what they want with the company.”

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Embracer declined to comment on Dark Horse’s future in Oregon.

The beginning of a comics empire

Richardson recalls a childhood building forts in the woods and selling Kool-Aid on the streets around Milwaukie. That was in the 1950s and 60s, when the Portland suburb had less than half the population it does today.

From an early age, Richardson says he was drawn to art and reading.

“I used to write my own neighborhood newspaper and draw the comic strips into it,” he recalls. “Sell them for a quarter, which I think was more than the Oregonian.”

After graduating from Portland State University with an art degree in 1977, Richardson opened Pegasus Books in Bend, selling sci-fi, fantasy and comic books. Pegasus would later become Things From Another World, a comic book shop that grew to 11 locations, including one next to Universal Studios in Hollywood.

While hosting signings at the original Bend store, Richardson learned many of the artists and authors he admired did not own the rights to their creations. The notion inspired him to start his own company that let creators keep their work. That company was Dark Horse.

Richardson returned to Portland and began publishing comics out of a small home near Northeast Broadway and Sandy Boulevard. After a year, the company was already outgrowing that old house, so Richardson began looking for the upstart company’s new home.

He found it in his old hometown.

“I have strong roots there and purchased the old Milwaukie Pharmacy building,” Richardson said.

Neil Hankerson, who Richardson brought on board that first year in Portland, said downtown Milwaukie was struggling at the time, and the opportunity arose to buy a building.

“The first one, the two-story one right on the corner of Monroe and Main Street,” Hankerson, who retired as Dark Horse’s longtime chief operating officer in 2023, said. “The payments were less than the rent we were paying in Portland.”

The company continued growing at a rapid clip, hiring writers, artists and editors from all over.

“We got up to about 12 people and it was starting to get a little toe pinch,” Hankerson recalled.

As the company looked to expand, the building next door became available. Dark Horse took it over and cut a hole connecting the two buildings so employees could walk back and forth.

The company set itself apart from the big comics publishers — Marvel and DC — with creator-owned work and a healthy dose of edge and dark humor. One of the company’s first big hits was “Boris the Bear.” Co-written by Richardson and Randy Stradley, the series chronicled the violent adventures of a gun-toting robotic bear named Boris. The darkly comedic books both parodied— and in the stories murdered — other popular comic characters like the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

Several of the company’s darker titles, such as “Hellboy” and “300,” eventually made their way to the big screen.

“It really impressed me watching the little engine that could become a great big freight train, bringing stuff into Hollywood and into the general public,” Steve Leiber, a Portland-based artist who has freelanced for Dark Horse, said.

The company also grew by capitalizing on available intellectual property rights. In 1991, Dark Horse purchased the rights to publish “Star Wars” comics, which were originally put out by Marvel in the 1970s.

Dark Horse continued to flourish into the 21st century, thanks in part to those intellectual properties. In 2019, the company turned Gerard Way’s “Umbrella Academy” comics into an Emmy-nominated TV show.

By the time Embracer purchased the company in 2021, Dark Horse brought in $100 million in profit.

Along the way, Dark Horse built a sizable footprint in downtown Milwaukie.

Milwaukie’s renaissance

The company grew to employ 180 people through Richardson’s habit of — as Leiber put it — “collecting artists and writers” from other companies.

“We ended up with kind of a mini campus and ended up filling it,” Hankerson said.

As Dark Horse grew, so did Milwaukie. The city had a population of about 18,600 around the time the company moved from Portland, according to U.S. Census data. Now, an estimated 21,360 people call Milwaukie home.

But people who’ve witnessed how Dark Horse influenced Milwaukie say its impact can’t be measured by population.

Diana Schutz worked as an editor at Dark Horse from 1990 to 2015, and still occasionally does work for the company. As Portlanders with money moving to the suburbs chose West Linn and Lake Oswego, she says, Milwaukie was considered “the poor cousin” of those cities. She says the comic book company challenged that.

“I think Dark Horse has given Milwaukie an identity claim that it didn’t have before,” Schutz said.

Others see Milwaukie as an oft-overlooked “dark horse” like the company itself.

“It’s kind of a sleeper in some ways that people don’t necessarily know its true value and it’s hemmed in by certain things: a lack of money, a lack of superstar attractions that other brands or cities have,” said Benjamin Dewey, a 10-year resident of Milwaukie who has worked on and off with Dark Horse since 2008.

As Milwaukie grew over the last four decades, Dark Horse played a role in making the city a more attractive place to live and do business, Richardson, Hankerson and Mayor Lisa Batey say.

“Having the third-largest comics publisher in the United States located in Milwaukie didn’t hurt,” Hankerson said.

Even Dark Horse employees who lived elsewhere needed a place near their work to grab coffee, lunch or a drink with co-workers, which helped drive business downtown.

At the same time, Dark Horse leaders actively participated in efforts to improve the city.

The company donated a comics mural to the teen room at Milwaukie’s Ledding Library. Hankerson, Dark Horse’s chief operating officer, served on city committees to help get funds for downtown tree-planting and to bring TriMet’s MAX light rail to town.

A year after MAX’s orange line came to Milwaukie in 2015, Realtor.com named the city the nation’s ninth hottest real estate market.

Chris Haberman, co-owner of the downtown shop Made in Milwaukie, has noticed something of a Milwaukie renaissance in recent years.

“There’s been something going on down here for quite a while. But right now, it really feels like it’s happening,” Haberman, a lifelong Milwaukie resident, said.

That “something” is probably due to several factors: from Pfriem Family Brewing retrofitting the old city hall into a trendy new pub to a brand new food cart pod near the new city hall. Coalitions of residents have also drawn people to Milwaukie through unique events like Porchfest, Little Float Milwaukie, MilwaukieFest and Bing in the New Year.

Batey, the city’s mayor, feels Dark Horse has played a sizable role in the city’s resurgence.

“I do think there’s a lot of hometown pride in Dark Horse,” she said.

Dark Horse not always a bright spot in Milwaukie

Still, some believe there was room for Dark Horse to be a friendlier neighbor.

According to Richardson and Hankerson, the company used to invite the community in more often, offering tours to school kids on field trips, for example. Eventually though, they had to stop because the office environment wasn’t conducive to kids coming through.

Some residents, like Dewey, feel Dark Horse could have done more to connect with the community. When Dewey first joined the city’s arts committee, others on the board told him they had long hoped to collaborate on a project with Dark Horse.

“We’re trying to make something happen with them,” Dewey said. “We have been for a long time, but we’ve kind of hit a brick wall.”

In the 10 years he’s lived in Milwaukie, Dewey says Dark Horse has been largely closed off from the public. The Dark Horse office building itself feels uninviting with shades drawn and outdated posters, he said. He sees it as a missed opportunity not only for the city, but for Dark Horse as well.

“I feel like the magic, the special sauce they had potentially going for them was that they are located in a community full of people” who would be eager to collaborate, Dewey said.

The company’s public standing also took a hit due to allegations of sexual abuse and harassment. An executive editor at Dark Horse was accused of sexually assaulting a comics writer in 2015 and again accused of sexual harassment and assault by a fellow Dark Horse editor in 2020. The company cut ties with him that year.

And last year, the company dropped a writer after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct. Neither of the men returned OPB’s requests for comment.

Dark Horse’s next chapter: A museum?

Richardson’s departure isn’t the only recent development that clouds the future of Dark Horse.

In May, the company announced the closure of all three remaining Things From Another World shop locations in Milwaukie, Beaverton and Los Angeles. Just a couple weeks later, employees at Dark Horse, including workers at Things From Another World, announced they had formed a union.

While the stores have closed, the company has voluntarily recognized the union. A fight is still going between Dark Horse leadership and the bargaining unit over which employees are union-eligible. The union did not respond to inquiries from OPB for this story.

Amid these changes, questions still swirl about whether Dark Horse will leave Milwaukie.

“I don’t know what their plans are, I just wish them the best,” Richardson said.

Hankerson, who still owns the company’s headquarters building with Richardson, said if Dark Horse moves out of Milwaukie, he’s not sure its employees will want to move with it. Richardson and Hankerson also own several other properties in downtown Milwaukie through their LLC, Suburban Explorations.

While Haberman said it’s hard to imagine Milwaukie without Dark Horse, ultimately whether Embracer keeps the company’s office in the city is not the most important thing in the world.

“The history of the business is important but does the actual corporate office need to be down here anymore?” Haberman wondered.

More important, he believes, is Richardson’s own plan for downtown.

Over the years, Richardson has hung on to much of the art and props from Dark Horse movies and shows. He plans to build a museum around this memorabilia in a warehouse he and Hankerson own on the corner of Jackson and Main streets.

The plans are still in early stages. But Richardson says he’s working with the city and has formed a nonprofit board to oversee the museum.

Richardson envisions “a pop culture museum covering comics and films and toys as well as exhibits.” He says it will have art, writing and film classes for kids.

The museum could even be an appropriate venue to resume the tours of school children that used to visit Dark Horse offices, he said.

Keeping at least a part of the company’s history rooted in his hometown is significant for Richardson.

“We’ve had offers to move. A number of offers over the years,” he said. “But as I said, my roots are in Milwaukie.”