Dynamite Entertainment was founded by Nick Barrucci in 2005, first producing two Army of Darknesslimited series published through Devil's Due Publishing until self-publishing their titles later that year. In the first two years, they added only a handful of titles like Red Sonja and Xena. After devoting itself to publishing only Army of Darkness, a year later Dynamite published Red Sonja, starting with a 25-cent issue #0. It sold 240,000 copies. #1, the first to sell at the full cover price of $2.99, sold 100,000 in initial orders which cemented Dynamite's position as a force in the American comic book industry. Dynamite publishes 14–20 comic books and 2–10 collections per month.
Dynamite Publishing
Dynamite Entertainment focuses primarily on comic book adaptations of existing properties, with most of its original properties being new interpretations of the classic monsters Dracula, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolfman. The company holds or has held the rights to publish titles based on films, television series and literature. It also has a license based on ', ' and the sequel Terminator: Revolution produced by the writer Simon Furman. Other properties include Buck Rogers, and Sherlock Holmes. Two additional crossovers have been released through other companies. One, titled Monster War released through Image Comics in 2005, pitted its monsters against Top Cow published characters Witchblade, the Darkness, Magdalena and Tomb Raider. The other was a 2006 crossover between DC Comics' Claw the Unconquered and Red Sonja via WildStorm Productions. In 2007, Dynamite took over the publication of Garth Ennis' The Boys after it was dropped by WildStorm. Among its licensed properties are Red Sonja, Army of Darkness, Battlestar Galactica and Lone Ranger. In 2010, Dynamite began publishing comic books based on The Green Hornet beginning with a miniseries written by Kevin Smith and followed by Green Hornet: Year One, which was written by Matt Wagner, and another written by Brett Matthews.. It is also due to publish new stories featuring Lee Falk's The Phantom. In May 2010, Dynamite Entertainment acquired the Chaos! Comics' library and all associated assets. These include the publishing labels Black Label Graphics, Infinity Comics and the properties Evil Ernie, Smiley The Psychotic Button, Chastity, Purgatori, Jade, Omen, Bad Kitty, Cremator, Lady Demon and many more. In October 2013, it was announced that Dynamite would relaunch several titles originally published by Gold Key Comics and that , The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor, Solar: Man of the Atom and Turok would be the first titles of the new line. In July 2016, prior to Comic-Con International, The New York Times ran a story about Dynamite Entertainment. In it, best-selling authorAndy Mangels was revealed to be writing a prestigious new intercompany crossover mini-series for the company, in conjunction with DC Comics: Wonder Woman '77 Meets The Bionic Woman, bringing together the Lynda Carter television character with Lindsay Wagner's fellow 1970s television super-heroine. The series was set to start in Fall 2016.
Titles
Comic books published by Dynamite in the format of ongoing or limited series include:
Public domain
Some of the titles published by Dynamite are based on franchises where the early stories are now in the public domain. In cases where Dynamite did not have a licensing agreement with the related trademark holders, Dynamite did not use trademarked terms in the comic book titles. Dynamite and ERB, Inc. eventually reached an agreement by which the latter agreed to let Dynamite publish material based on Burroughs' work.