Hello, Dark Horse Database, this is Concernedalien11780. My first experience with the Dark Horse brand was being given a Shrek comic as a kid and noticing the Dark Horse logo for the first time ever. Somehow, I could tell that the comics were meant for adult fans of Shrek because it said "damn" once or twice, which, when you're seven, somewhat emotionally disabled, and raised by decently conservative parents, is one of the scariest things you can see. The first two Shrek movies were made for adults and kids, which is why they had some mild language and reasonably sophisticated humor, and Dark Horse was publishing comics more oriented for that audience than the youth audience of Shrek's. DreamWorks Animation was originally trying to be the anti-Disney, largely because it made in part out of Jeffery Katzenberg's spite towards Disney and Michael Eisner (not sure who was the worse of the two of them, Katzenberg or Eisner, but they both acted pretty undignified during the 90s), so their first two major movies were a Woody Allen-style mockery of the newest Pixar movie of the time (I'm talking about the Antz vs. A Bug's Life controversy, and while they were both seen as equally good in 1998 for different reasons, A Bug's Life is much better remembered, probably because nowadays DreamWorks would rather have it be so that people forget that they made it, but that's not quite possible, thanks to Netflix and the internet) and an unflinching adaptation of the Book of Exodus done in the style of a bloodier Disney musical (I'm talking about The Prince Of Egypt, of course. I feel that Katzenberg may have wanted to make a movie centered around an iconic Old Testament story partially because of his own Jewish faith and because of wanting to spite Disney in a really sensitive spot, knowing of the allegations that Walt Disney was a Nazi sympathizer, allegations that will never truly die. To set the record straight, according to the sources gathered to talk about this on Walt Disney's Wikipedia page, he was not a racist or anti-Semite per se, he just associated himself with people who were when he ought not to, such as assisting the Motion Pictures Alliance For The Preservation Of American Ideals in the wake of the Cold War, was the only studio head to not retract his invitation to see the first film of a German filmmaker and Nazi propagandist appearing in Hollywood one day in the 1930s, and was more racially insensitive than actually racist, as was pretty much everyone in America until Jane Fonda became famous, and now everyone who is "frustrated" by liberal politics, political correctness, and so-called social justice warriors on Reddit. Nowadays, Disney seems to be trying pretty hard to be the world's most progressive corporation, which I like in some ways and dislike in others.). Then Shark Tale happened and DreamWorks inadvertently set a low standard for other animated movies from there. It wasn't until How To Train Your Dragon (which Dark Horse is now making graphic novel spinoffs of!) that DreamWorks found a happy medium- similar storytelling to Pixar and the modern Walt Disney Animation Studios, no overly-dark attempts at spiting other studios, and trying to not be defined by their average-to-bad movies, even while continuing to make them alongside good ones.
Oh, right, Dark Horse Comics. They were special in that they were the first major comic publisher to not rely on the ever-and-ever-more-outdated-Comics Code Authority or to set all of their original characters in a shared comic book universe. This is probably because of both the creator-ownership for all of its original characters and how there aren't really that many superhero stories published, or at least not in the traditional sense. It's hard to think of Hellboy, arguably Dark Horse's most iconic original character, as a superhero, considering how he is a demon that looks like a hornless devil, but that's part of Mike Mignola's creativity- keeping a demonic-looking character from acting like a demon. Their most popular comic books are adaptations of other media, my favorites being Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend Of Korra, The Legend Of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, and their upcoming HTTYD graphic novel I mentioned earlier. It's too bad that they couldn't publish more Star Wars comics because of how when Disney purchased Marvel, it didn't just give Disney the legal rights to the original characters of the Marvel Universe. It effectively turned Marvel into the comic publishing arm of Disney, allowing them to publish any comic related to a Disney-owned franchise as they wanted, similar to how DC is Warner Bros.' comic book publishing arm, though this does not include Cartoon Network or Adult Swim shows anymore, as the currently-running comic adaptations of those are all published at other studios, and a reminder that Warner Bros. is Cartoon Network's sister company under Time Warner, not their parent company. As a result of the Disney-Marvel buyout, Star Wars couldn't last much longer at Dark Horse and eventually began publishing under Marvel, which was some sort of weird homecoming in a way, considering how the very first Star Wars comics in the late 70s were published by Marvel. While I'm disappointed that Disney and Lucasfilm declared all Expanded Universe works created before April 25, 2014 non-canon and wish that at least the most critically-acclaimed of them could remain and feeling that a lot of them could be adapted into movies or TV series, upon learning that many stories contradicted one another simply because there's no way all people making all of the EU works could know the plans of all of the other ones. The newfound Lucasfilm Story Group seems like a good idea, monitoring the production of all of the new movies, TV shows, books, comics, and video games so that none of them contradict any others, though I'm not sure that their influence will be as strong as they say. This wiki looks a little worse for wears, so once I've finished my quest to put a blog post on all of the wikis for things I like, I'll make a list of all of the underdeveloped wikis, wikis that people have responded to me on (which I'll admit I make hard by disabling comments on my posts, but the wikis that have people that bother to message me on my wall must have more open communities), wikis from a preselected pattern of fandoms that I've wrote down on a list, and the wikis for potential "friendly fandoms" for the first fandom that shows up in the preselected fandom, I'll put this on the list as an underdeveloped wiki and consider becoming a more regular contributor and fan of Dark Horse comics works, including trying to go outside of what I'm more naturally drawn to in order to expand my tastes in comic genres and styles, on the slim but fair chance this wiki is the one my pattern used on the final list I make is the one my pattern chooses. It's one of those things that only truly makes sense to me, so asking questions will just give you a few headaches. Thanks for reading, and if you have something to say to me about anything in this post, or want to talk about anything related to Dark Horse Comics in general, please send me a message on the chat wall section of my userpage. Thank you, and see you on the wiki.