Dark Horse Comics

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• Top 6 Comic Book Publishers of All Time

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• Marvel Comics

  Marvel Comics traces its origins to 1939 as Timely Comics before rebranding as Marvel in the early 1960s, when writer-editor Stan Lee, alongside artists including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, launched a wave of new characters including Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men that redefined the American superhero comic. Marvel's characters were distinguished by their psychological complexity and everyday flaws, with heroes facing financial struggles, personal insecurities, and interpersonal conflicts alongside their superhuman adventures, a deliberate departure from the more idealized heroes DC Comics had previously established as the industry standard. The company's characters expanded into an enormously successful shared cinematic universe starting with Marvel Studios' "Iron Man" in 2008, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe grew into one of the highest-grossing film franchises in history, driving renewed mainstream cultural relevance for the source comics decades after their original creation. Marvel Comics's combination of its 1960s reinvention of psychologically complex superheroes and its later transformation into the foundation of the record-breaking Marvel Cinematic Universe has made it one of the most culturally and commercially significant comic book publishers in history.

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• DC Comics

  DC Comics traces its origins to 1934, and the company published Action Comics #1 in 1938, introducing Superman, widely credited as the first true superhero and the character that established the entire superhero genre as a distinct category within American comic books. DC followed Superman with Batman in 1939 and Wonder Woman in 1941, building a roster of characters that became so culturally foundational that "the Big Three" remain among the most globally recognized fictional characters in any medium more than 80 years after their creation. DC's characters have been adapted into numerous major film franchises across multiple eras, from the Christopher Reeve Superman films of the 1970s and 1980s through Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy and the more recent DC Extended Universe and DC Universe film franchises, reflecting sustained multi-generational commercial relevance. DC Comics's combination of its foundational role publishing the very first superhero in Superman and its creation of some of the most enduringly significant characters in fiction has made it one of the two most historically dominant comic book publishers in American history.

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• Image Comics

  Image Comics was founded in 1992 by a group of prominent artists, including Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, and Rob Liefeld, who left Marvel Comics specifically to retain creative and financial ownership of the characters and stories they created, a significant departure from the traditional work-for-hire model dominant at Marvel and DC. The company's founding "creator-owned" business model, letting writers and artists retain full rights to intellectual property they developed for Image, became a significant alternative structure within the mainstream comic book industry, distinct from Marvel and DC's tightly controlled shared-universe ownership approach. Image published numerous commercially and critically significant creator-owned titles, including "Spawn," "The Walking Dead," and "Saga," several of which were adapted into major television series and films while their original creators retained direct ownership and creative control. Image Comics's combination of its founding artists' rebellion against work-for-hire ownership and its sustained commercial success publishing creator-owned titles has made it one of the most structurally significant comic book publishers in the industry's modern history.

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• IDW Publishing

  IDW Publishing was founded in 1999 in San Diego, California, and the company built a significant portion of its business around licensed comic adaptations of major media franchises, including Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, alongside original horror and science-fiction titles. The publisher's Transformers and G.I. Joe comic lines helped sustain and expand those toy-based franchises' fictional universes during periods between major film and television releases, giving dedicated fans continued new stories set within those established properties. IDW also published significant original horror content, including "Locke & Key," written by Joe Hill, which was later adapted into a live-action Netflix television series, demonstrating the publisher's ability to develop original properties alongside its licensed franchise business. IDW Publishing's combination of its extensive licensed toy-franchise comic business and its original horror titles like "Locke & Key" has made it one of the most significant mid-sized comic book publishers in the modern American comics industry.

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• BOOM! Studios

  BOOM! Studios was founded in 2005 in Los Angeles, and the company grew into a significant publisher of both original creator-owned comics and licensed properties, including a notable run of comics based on Jim Henson properties like "The Dark Crystal" and "Fraggle Rock." The publisher's original series "Lumberjanes," launched in 2014, became particularly significant for its focus on a young, diverse cast of characters at a summer camp, drawing critical acclaim and a devoted following for expanding the range of stories and audiences mainstream comic publishing had traditionally served. BOOM! Studios also publishes "Once & Future" and other genre-spanning original titles, and the company's KaBOOM! imprint specifically targets younger readers, reflecting a deliberate publishing strategy spanning multiple age demographics beyond the traditional adult-oriented superhero comic audience. BOOM! Studios's combination of its Jim Henson licensed properties and its critically acclaimed original series like "Lumberjanes" has made it one of the most significant independent comic book publishers to emerge in the 21st century.

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More in Books

• The Exorcist

  "The Exorcist," published by William Peter Blatty in 1971, follows a mother's desperate search for help after her young daughter begins exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior, ultimately leading two Catholic priests to perform a harrowing exorcism. Blatty has said the novel was loosely inspired by a real 1949 case of an alleged demonic possession and exorcism involving a young boy in Maryland, which Blatty first heard about as a student at Georgetown University years before writing the book. The novel's massive commercial success and its hugely influential 1973 film adaptation, one of the highest-grossing horror films ever made, together played a major role in popularizing possession and exorcism as a defining horror subgenre in both literature and film for decades afterward. The Exorcist's combination of its grounding in a real alleged 1949 exorcism case and its role establishing possession horror as a major genre has made it one of the most influential horror novels of the 20th century.

• Pet Sematary

  "Pet Sematary," published by Stephen King in 1983, follows Dr. Louis Creed and his family after they move next to an ancient burial ground with the power to resurrect the dead, though anything buried there returns fundamentally, disturbingly changed. King has said he initially considered the novel too disturbing to publish and set the manuscript aside for years before eventually releasing it, largely due to the depth of grief and parental horror explored in the story's central premise involving the death of a young child. The novel drew directly on King's own family's real experience living near a busy highway in Maine, including a pet cemetery near their home and a close call involving one of King's own children, grounding the story's horror in genuinely lived personal anxiety. Pet Sematary's combination of King's initial reluctance to publish something he found too disturbing and its grounding in his own family's real experiences has made it one of the most emotionally harrowing horror novels ever written.

• It

  "It," published by Stephen King in 1986, follows a group of childhood friends in the fictional town of Derry, Maine who confront a shape-shifting entity that typically appears as a sinister clown named Pennywise, first as children in the 1950s and again as adults decades later. At over 1,100 pages, the novel is one of King's longest works, and its structure alternates between the characters' childhood and adult timelines, exploring how childhood trauma and memory shape adult identity alongside its horror narrative. The novel's Pennywise the Dancing Clown became one of the most culturally recognizable horror figures ever created, significantly amplified by a widely watched 1990 television miniseries adaptation and later a hugely successful 2017 feature film, both of which introduced the character to new generations of audiences. It's combination of King's ambitious dual-timeline childhood-and-adulthood structure and Pennywise's status as one of horror fiction's most iconic villains has made it one of the most culturally significant horror novels ever published.

• The Shining

  "The Shining," published by Stephen King in 1977, follows Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic, who takes a winter caretaker job at the isolated Overlook Hotel with his wife and psychically gifted young son, Danny, only for the hotel's malevolent influence to slowly consume Jack's sanity. King has said the novel was substantially inspired by a real stay at Colorado's Stanley Hotel with his wife in 1974, when the mostly empty, off-season hotel's eerie atmosphere left a strong impression that directly shaped the fictional Overlook Hotel's setting and mood. The novel became one of King's most critically acclaimed works and helped cement his reputation as a serious literary horror writer beyond genre fiction, exploring themes of addiction, family trauma, and isolation alongside its supernatural horror elements. The Shining's combination of King's real Stanley Hotel inspiration and its serious literary exploration of addiction and family trauma alongside supernatural horror has made it one of the most acclaimed horror novels of the 20th century.

• Frankenstein

  "Frankenstein," published anonymously in 1818 by Mary Shelley when she was just 20 years old, tells the story of scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a living being from assembled body parts, only to abandon his creation in horror once it comes to life. Shelley reportedly conceived the novel's core idea during a famous 1816 gathering at Lake Geneva with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, when the group challenged each other to write ghost stories during a summer of unusually dark, stormy weather caused by a distant volcanic eruption. The novel is widely regarded as one of the earliest works of science fiction as well as horror, exploring themes of scientific overreach and the ethical responsibility of creators toward their creations, ideas that have remained central to speculative fiction for two centuries since. Frankenstein's combination of its remarkable origin at the 1816 Lake Geneva ghost story challenge and its foundational role bridging horror and science fiction has made it one of the most influential novels in the history of English literature.