Dark Horse Comics Is Looking At Getting Into The Video Game Business
- Thread starter Cicada 5
- Start date
Interesting. It's always nice to have a new player in town. Maybe they can get that Trigun game off the ground. That was supposed to come out for the Dreamcast back in the late nineties, but got canceled and turned into Gun Grave for the PS2.
That was 2K. All Dark Horse did was pony up the license. They had no involvement with development.
Does Dark Horse still do Comics? Did they make Witchblade woke? Because I used to LOVE Witchblade for.....reasons dont worry about it.
Yes.
Last I checked, no. If they did, so what? Besides, that term has lost all meaning, and it's nothing but a catch-all phrase for "I don't like because it has someone that's female, different color, or religion/atheist". I'm not accusing you of that, but that's the trend I've noticed that's been going on the past couple of years. Because God forbid somebody be different from you or talk about actual politics you're not used to or comfortable with. Regardless if it's done poorly or not.
You like a comic book with fanservice. Big deal. I didn't even know Witchblade existed until the anime adaptation back in the late 2000s and early 2010s. I knew a guy that was a huge Witchblade fan. Besides dude, I got games like Bayonetta and Onechanbara, so no need to feel embarrassed or ashamed. Like what you like.
My definition in this example would be, "Take a traditionally amazingly attractive woman in skimpy clothing and make her ugly and wear only turtlenecks."
There was a terrible TV show at one point too, but because it was on TV obviously it couldn't be as sexy.
I found a large massive collection of Witchblade on Amazon for 20 bucks. 650 pages of an actually pretty good comic. Witchblade did a lot of crossovers withthe Darkness too because I think Dark Horse put them in the same universe. I might fuck around and collect these compendiums now. The Darkness was good too iirc. They also did a Tomb Raider series that was good.
Man remember when Comics were awesome!? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
That's a stereotype that rarely ever happens. There is a term called adaptional modesty, but that's been around long before people started using woke as a catch-all term.
Never knew about it, so I'll take your word for it
They do share the same universe.
Take off the nostalgic goggles, now! Comics are always awesome. They still are. You just only remember the good stuff and not the bad. You forgot with every decade and year, trends change and people change. You forgot that comics back then had racism and sexism that still existed this day. Not to the major extent as it was in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s '80s, 90s, and 2000s. But it's still there. There is racism and sexism in the comic book industry. This is a known fact. Yes it's gotten better, but there are still a plethora of issues. Comics aren't just for white guys anymore. And it's been that way for a long while. Changes not necessarily always bad nor is always good, but there is a right time for change. Change should come as soon as possible when necessary. I don't want comics do they be the same like they were back in the '80s and '90s. Especially during the Dark age comics. Hell, I barely read any comic books during the 90s because of their overly long soap opera drama bullcrap and "edginess". The only comics I invested in at that time were the Sonic Archie brand comics. They have people actually trying and succeeding. The comic series had plenty of ups and downs. Especially around the late 2000s and early 2010s. The fighting between Archie and Sega was getting ridiculous and that's why Archie doesn't publish Sonic anymore. It's all in IDW'S hands now.
I have to disagree with you. I'm not into the comic world enough, but I watch Youngrippa on Youtube who is a big comic guy and he had sited that for a long while now both Marvel and DC have been uglifying and manly-ing up all their female characters. He pointed out that for the past two years, less and less American Comic's are selling in favor of Manga instead. The top twenty graphic books of top seller have been entirely Manga for a while now because people aren't buying into Marvel and DC's scheme.
Art has degraded, storylines have degraded, and the characters no longer fit the design they used to have that people loved.
But the thing is, was this ever really reflected in the comic's after 1990? I mean sure that old 1950's shit surely had racism. But then you have anti-racist messaging through things like the X-men series since the beginning.
Sexism maybe internally, but explain to be how drawing Storm the African Goddess of weather was ever sexist or racist for that matter. Drawing attractive women isn't sexist, being sexy isn't sexism, otherwise Twitch thots are sexist against themselves for objectifying their bodies.
Now maybe internally the companies may have had issues with these things but I couldn't speak on that because I just watched X-men and read comics in the 90's.
There was a twitter war about this image, with people saying that real woman couldn't and wouldn't sit like that. https://i0.wp.com/www.geeksaresexy.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/mary-jane-pose.jpg?resize=600,453
Where as many female comic fans cosplayed themselves doing the pose to prove twitter wrong. Sure the proportions aren't perfect because art is almost always going to adapt some abstractness to it. But it really does seem like YoungRippa59 is right, they refuse to let women be women, everyone has to be ugly and two visits to Mcdonald's a week too much.
The result is people aren't buying the books. Instead they go to Manga where the stories are allowed to be free to tackle whatever subject matter they want, and the artist is free to draw their characters as sexy or not sexy as they desire. Manga is swooping in on the void that Mainstream American comics are willingly leave behind.
Neither am i, but it's more than just ugly art, characters, or making them less attractive. Get artists that actually care, don't rush their work, or have the publishers not rush them. As far as the longer industry, they've been solely getting more leadership than American comic books for years. That goes back all the way to the early to mid 2000s. It was a slow start, but began increasingly fast as the years went on. That's not surprising the slightest. What helps is that the manga industry at least half stories that actually finish even if they get sequels. Yes, you get a lot of overly long ones but at least they finish up at some point... usually.
Now as far as the 90s is concerned, yes it got a lot better, but there were still moments of cultural stereotyping that would be seen as racist either in the 2000s or by today's standards. Sometimes even for the '90s standard. And I appreciate Storm and what they've done for her as a character, but that's just one positive example. And I know there's other positive examples, doesn't make it any less true. I don't mind characters being sexy either and while I rather not have them br constantly uglied up, the superhero comic books have a huge fascination for sexing up women and many times teenage girls in comics. That's not an opinion, that's a well-known fact. It didn't happen every single time, but it has happened a lot.
Also, if you want to look up a comic book that was published by DC that has tons of racism and hatred against people for practicing different religion look up Holy Terror. Done by Frank Miller in the early 2000s. All I have to say is that even DC comics doesn't like it and pretty much want nothing to do with it. Let's just say it doesn't portray people of darker color or practicing Islam in a positive light. They're seen as either cowards or assholes. All the superheroes in that comic look like knock-offs of all the DC superheroes. The reason why is because Frank wanted to use Batman, Superman, and Wonder woman to beat up people will just for being a different color or religion. DC said no, so you have all those look-alikes in place.
Another thing, you have plenty of people complaining when more people of color started showing up or different gender getting more defined roles in the mid to late 2000s. Or taking a superhero's place. Regardless if they had great characterization or not, they loudly complaining all of a sudden and many of them saying "it's not racism, but...". You forgot that, that many comic readers are predominantly white. Don't get me wrong, more people of color began reading, book since the '50s and 60s and the audience is expanded, but you have these fools that act like that it was not the case or downplay it. For catering to those people of just that specific demographic, when they knew sooner or later it was no longer sustainable.
As for your Twitter story, not that I don't believe you, I just wish people would really get off Twitter and stop living on it. Ask for those guys videos, I'm not interested at the moment, because I just really don't care to hear another loud mouth on youtube. I'm sure he's an okay guy but I'm just not in the mood today. Plus I'm still at work.
This is kind of why I never stuck around with comic books long. You either have really soap opera bad stories, parts of the fandom that act like jerks, the publishers that just don't care, or just being negative all around. I know there's good people out there and I acknowledge that, but it's pretty much why I don't get involved with fandoms that heavy. Now if I'm going to buy a comic book or graphic novel, I rather it be self-contained, one-off story, or miniseries. I might take @ObsidianJones advice and check out those Champion comic books that are in graphic novel packs now.
I also recommend you check out Udon comics, they still manage to keep plenty of people handsome or pretty, if that's what you want. Now they mostly do adaptions of Capcom properties, but they have some of their own creations.
Last edited:
Another thing, state your arguments to another thread. This is about Dark Horse comics. I don't like derailing threads. I recommend you take this argument and make it a thread in the comic book forums.
Last edited:
Yeah I think this complaint comes from the idea that, "Why are you making Superman black, when you can just make a new character that is black." Which I really agree with to be honest. I don't care that a hero is black or white or whatever. I love Storm and I love Spawn. So why not create something new for people to read.
It's like these publishers think that by making a black Superman, you'll gain more of a black audience while also keeping your white audience. But that usually isn't how it goes. Not only does it change the character, the writing in the Black version is usually much different and not true to the character in general as it will often lead into SJW-like subject matter.
While at the same time you can't just go full "Woke"either. Marvel just did a super hero team with nothing but LBGTQ+ characters and it fucking failed because the number 1 rule in everything entertainment wise is simply this. "Don't try to preach to your audience." If you want a message, fine, but weave it into the story in a way that makes sense and blends in with everything else about comics people like. Fuck this is true for those stupid CW shows that are just men-hating Lesbian fuckfests. Nobody watches Batman for that shit.
I don't see why they have to sacrifice the original version for the PoC or female version, when you could just as easily make a new hero that would likely have much more cross over potential between audiences. Spawn is fucking awesome! You make a new Marvel based badass dude like him and people would totally read that shit! People will flock to awesome shit no matter the race or gender, because I highly doubt the bigotted comicbook fans is that much of a %'age of the actual reader pool. Nerds don't tend to be like that......But Nerd DO HATE when you fuck with established cannon.
Bottom line is this. If you make a good book, people will buy it no matter what the main character looks like. But if you give them big tits or a big dick....it helps.
Sure, best of luck to them. And if we can get a couple good games out of it, all the better. I wouldn't mind a nice Hellboy title.
Fyi, Witchblade and The Darkness aren't Dark Horse. They're Image Comics. And for a hot take, The Darkness games we got were imo way better than the comic they were based on. Especially the first one.
Fyi, Witchblade and The Darkness aren't Dark Horse. They're Image Comics. And for a hot take, The Darkness games we got were imo way better than the comic they were based on. Especially the first one.
That's not even a hot take nowadays. Most fans are inclined to agree with you. Everyone pretty much agreed with the first game when it came out. So even back then, it wasn't seen as a hot take or unpopular opinion. The fans were praising that game to high heaven and were congratulating it for fixing the problems the comic book had.
I think a Witchblade game in the style of old God of War games could be awesome as fuck!
I know it's become something of a cult classic, but I recall reception at the time being pretty meh. But that was the better part of 15 years ago, so memory might be faulty. And yeah, they fixed the problems the comic had, by dumping everything except the basic premise and character outlines because the source material was pure 90's edgefest, but that turned out for the better. Also, it gave us that part. You know the one.
*Remembers the body proportions of Witchblade, as it was festering in the 90s comic book anatomy crisis. *
....yyeaaah, surprise surprise, they couldn't find a competent actress that looked like a barbie doll turned stripper with a metal fetish. Go figure.
Two different subjects, in two different forms of media, so I dunno what you are talking about here except to make a snarky comment for no reason.*Remembers the body proportions of Witchblade, as it was festering in the 90s comic book anatomy crisis. *
....yyeaaah, surprise surprise, they couldn't find a competent actress that looked like a barbie doll turned stripper with a metal fetish. Go figure.
The reviews were great from professionals, but the sales were lacking and meh. But from the hardcore comic fans that bothered to play it, they couldn't stop talking about it.
What happyninja42 is saying is actually relevant to the conversation. A lot of artists took the wrong idea and copied Rob Liefeld. A lot of women spines do not bend that way. Ask Linkara from Atop the 4th Wall.
Last edited: