Continuing our round-robin looks at publishers and asking about their views of the coming year, the wheel stops at Dark Horse today, with Scott Allie volunteering to talk about the titles he edits, as well as the broader Dark Horse picture.

Newsarama: Before we start getting into specifics with Dark Horse, let’s hear your thoughts on 2005 as a whole for the industry. What’s your impression of the “year in comics” as a whole in ’05?

Scott Allie: I don’t know. 2005 was my year to put my nose to the grindstone and focus myopically on what I was doing, so I missed a lot of what the industry as a whole was doing.

NRAMA: Fair enough. There’s nothing wrong with working hard, after all. Well, how about for Dark Horse, then? Be brutally honest - how did Dark Horse fare in your eyes? Was the year as successful as you had hoped it would be when you rang-in the beginning of ’05 a little over 365 days ago?

SA: Dark Horse did great in a lot of key areas. Sin City and Star Wars helped us to be on the top of the heap with Amazon and the bookstores. Manga helped with that too. We resisted the urge that others apparently found irresistible, to drench the market in more manga than anyone knew what to do with-we continued to put out the best manga we could, and to give it the kind of attention it deserves to make high quality books. Star Wars built up into great shape to hopefully stay strong after the end of the movies. Conan and Hellboy are strong. Overall, I think that the creative quality of our books was up from the year before, with some real notable people doing their first work for us-Humberto Ramos and Brian Vaughn, to name a couple.

NRAMA: A lot of the online comic discussion in ’05 seemed to focus on line-wide-mega-crossover events... a type of initiative that’s pretty difficult for a company such as Dark Horse to participate in. As these huge mega-events became all the rage in comicdom, were there any internal discussions about things that could be done in-house at Dark Horse that would help ensure your books were kept in the public eye?

SA: No. Those stunts generally don’t make for great comics. They make for great marketing campaigns and great events... but I couldn’t read one of those if you paid me. We usually talk over crossovers and that sort of thing in terms of what would be fun - to do that sort of all-inclusive crossover, that wouldn’t be fun at all, I can’t imagine.

NRAMA: As you alluded to a little bit ago, to the surprise of, well, virtually no one, manga has continued to become a huge force to be reckoned with - especially in the book store markets. As one of the earlier companies to actively bring manga before the eyes of American readers, I can’t help but picture a little smirk on the collective face of Dark Horse’s management as so much of the industry continues to scramble to “crack” this market. Really... it must feel good to know that Dark Horse was so ahead of the curve on this one, doesn’t it?

SA: Sure... and trying to ride the wave responsibility and respectfully, that’s the goal now. If this manga bubble is treated a certain way, it can grow forever. If it is treated the wrong way, it can burst, and we don’t want to see our little bubble burst. That’s reflected in the way we approach it. I think you’ll see that play out over time.

NRAMA: Along with manga and creator-owned projects (more on the latter in a bit), Dark Horse is fairly well-known for its extensive library of licensed properties such as Star Wars... and this was a pretty definitive year for Star Wars. What are the challenges of producing licensed comics of such high-profile properties... especially during a year in which the source material is under such smothering scrutiny? Specifically, was it business as usual with the Star Wars line... or was there extra attention paid to the line by the Lucas crew in ’05?

SA: I can’t really give you the inside on this, since I don’t work on Star Wars myself - but I do know that our editors approached things in a certain kind of way this year, knowing that it was a make or break year. In years when movies come out, we get a new infusion of readers for the comics. But what was different from the years when Episodes I & II came out, we knew this would be the last one, that come December people wouldn’t still be dreaming about what the next Star Wars movie is gonna be... so we really needed to make the most of all that attention and make damn sure those readers were gonna stick around.

editor’s note - for more on Dark Horse’s Star Wars plans, click here. Or here for an interview with Knights of the Old Republic writer John Jackson Miller, or here for an interview with Star Wars: Rebellion writer Rob Williams.

NRAMA: Speaking of licensing, the film adaptation of Sin City proved to be a huge success in ’05, with Sin City graphic novels taking five of the top ten slots of the best-selling GNs of the year. Given that Sin City is fully-owned by Frank Miller, how does Dark Horse go about dealing with the Hollywood execs in regards to the creator-owned comics they publish. Dark Horse obvious has a certain about of “connections” in Hollywood (see: The Mask, Aliens, Predator, Star Wars, Buffy, etc)... but when it comes to attracting the attention of film studios, is this something the company is actively involved with... or is it primarily left to the creators to shop their properties around if they so chose to do so?

SA: In most cases Mike Richardson sets up the deals in Hollywood. Sin City was a bit different, but in general, when it’s a comic first and then a movie, Mike played a major part in making it happen. The creators keep the ownership of the material, but Dark Horse is a partner in the deal.

NRAMA: Another mystery solved.

Let’s touch base specifically on a few of the books you are most involved with - starting with the “horror line” you launched at Dark Horse. With 2005 being a huge year in horror for Hollywood, did you see a lot of that trickle-down into the Dark Horse horror books? What are your feelings about how the line did in 2005?

SA: Yeah, you could say there was some trickle down. Mike’s had particular success with horror films, getting deals signed, so that’s brought some books to the horror line. Damn Nation, for instance, was something that we did knowing from the outset that it would be both a comic and a film deal, and that positively affected the budget on the book, you could say. I personally was pulled away from the horror line a lot this year, to keep Conan going strong, and to beef up the Hellboy line of books, so I don’t think there are that many of my books from the horror line this year - although Revelations was probably my one real project of passion for the whole year. But the interest in Hollywood did contribute to the overall horror schedule this year, with Damn Nation and Man with the Screaming Brain, and the reprint of the Universal Monsters stuff.

NRAMA: You’ve dropped clues about Hellboy a few times already... but spell it out for us. Can you tell us about what we should expect from the flagship Dark Horse horror titles Hellboy and The Goon in ’06... as well as any other new titles that readers should keep an eye out for?

SA: With Hellboy, expect more - between Mignola’s collaboration with Corben in February, and his six-issue collaboration with Duncan Fegredo starting in September, we’ll see more Hellboy comics than we’ve seen in a long time, and unlike Weird Tales, these really push his story forward, and change him as a character. And B.P.R.D. is going strong, still following a formula of five-or-six-issue miniseries with two or three month breaks between-all written by Mignola and Arcudi, drawn by Guy Davis. The next miniseries has some revelations about the main characters, deeper insight into some of them than we’ve had in years. There’s an appearance by Hellboy, and Mignola will drop in to draw something.

As far as The Goon... there are some big plans in the works right now, but nothing we can announce for another few weeks or so, probably. But Eric’s vision is getting a little larger for the book, and he needs to do some things to realize that potential. It’s a question of how...

NRAMA: On a non-horror note, though, 2005 was a huge year for Conan, and the year closed-out with the announcement that Kurt Busiek will be leaving Conan - only to have the legendary Tim Truman picking-up the writing reins after a brief stint by Mike Mignola. We’re also starting to see more and more Conan spin-off books these days... so what should readers be expecting from Conan in 2006?

SA: Well, the big show with Conan is Truman taking over the story after Mignola takes his turn. The spinoffs, though, will assume a major slot in the schedule. It was supposed to commence with Demons of Khitai, but we needed to take a break - but starting with Kurt, Len Wein, and Kelley Jones’s Book of Thoth in March, we’ll have a Conan side project every month - that is, every month there’ll be the Conan monthly plus one other Conan book. The popularity of the book justifies it, but the main thing for me was making sure that we weren’t just throwing things on the schedule. For me, each of these side projects needs to justify its own existence as a story, so I needed a lot of time to build up to it. But now I’ve got enough of a backlog of stories I really want to see out there that I felt comfortable to make the commitment of one a month. These are going to be books that couldn’t just be somehow done in the context of the monthly series, that complement what Tim is doing there, but don’t take away from it. The Book of Thoth is a great way to kick it off, for me, because that could never have been done in the monthly-it’s the detailed origin of Thoth-amon, four 40-page issues, so we never could have found room for that in Conan’s main book. That’s sort of my ideal for the side projects-although the rest won’t be 40-pages.

NRAMA: In your eyes, what book (or books) proved to be the biggest surprise success of ’05? Conversely, what book(s) do you feel might have slipped through the cracks and were/are deserving of a little extra attention?

SA: Serenity did better than we imagined. We knew it would do well, but we weren’t prepared for that level of success, reprinting the first issue twice within a month... and it just kept going. I kind of look at Revelations as the book people missed. It sold well for us, but I thought that thing would go through the roof like Hellboy. Incredible story, incredible creative team who’ve had tons of success in the mainstream. I think a lot of people missed out on a great story, and Humberto’s greatest art job to date.

NRAMA: There’s always the TPB, I suppose. Well, in closing, can you tease us out a bit about some Dark Horse groundwork that was being laid in 2005 that will shock and awe readers in 2006?

SA: It’s our 20th anniversary, so we’re making some big plans. The Hellboy, Conan, and Star Wars lines are all getting major shots in the arm - the best year yet for those lines of books. The fact that Hellboy and Conan are really achieving “line” status is probably the biggest change there, but we’ve slowly and organically built up to it. Star Wars has been totally reconfigured in light of the post-movies situation, in a way that’s which is good for readers, and good for us. Also, Dark Horse is actively going after new creator-owned books, to really strengthen that part of the lineup.