Dell Comics Was Once One Of The Best-Selling Comic Publishers, Indie Or Otherwise
Dell Comics got its start in 1929, originally publishing humor strips. Like many publishers of its day, it would eventually put out a wide variety of books from all kinds of genres and claimed in 1953 that it was the world's largest comic publisher— putting out an estimated 26 million copies per month.
Before closing its doors in 1973, Dell was best known for Four Color, an anthology of comic strips that ran for thirteen hundred issues, as well as its Walt Disney comics, including Carl Barks' iconic Scrooge McDuck comics which is where the beloved character was first introduced.
Archie Comics Is One Of America's Oldest-Surviving Comic Companies
Everyone refers to Marvel and DC as the Big Two, but really it should probably be the Big Three— as Archie Comics has survived in the industry since the Golden Age as well. Best known for Archie Andrews and his friends and enemies in Riverdale, the characters of Archie Comics are just as well known as the Big Two's superheroes and have went on to multimedia stardom across multiple decades.
Archie Comics still puts out the Archie Comic Digests that everyone remembers from trips to the grocery store, as well as more standard comics for the direct market. Archie Comics have also put out all manner of licensed and superhero books and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon, with the success of The CW's gritty adaptation Riverdale helping to keep the Archie characters relevant for a whole new generation.
Charlton Comics Got More Popular After Its Death
Charlton Comics started in 1946 and ran until 1986. The publisher's characters are quite familiar to modern readers, as DC bought the rights to many— including Blue Beetle, the Question, Captain Atom, and more— and has been using those characters in their books for decades. Charlton was always a little behind the trends, but some great creators worked there.
Comic heavyweights like Steve Ditko and Dick Giordano worked there in the '60s and while its now mostly known for its superheroes, they put out comics from a wide variety of genres in their forty year history. While largely overlooked by the mainstream during its life, the company has since earned a lot of much-deserved respect for all it contributed to the industry.
Dark Horse Comics Is One Of The Most Trusted Names In The Industry
Starting in 1986, Dark Horse Comics is a titan of indie publishing. Two of its most popular books are Frank Miller's Sin City and Mike Mignola's various Hellboy and BPRD comics, but they've done so much more. Not only have they been putting out some of the best licensed comics of all time, but they brought manga from mangakas like Masamune Shiro and Katsuhiro Otomo to America in the 1990s.
In recent years, Dark Horse has been the home to Jeff Lemire's Black Hammer books; Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba's Umbrella Academy; and sequels to Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club novels. Dark Horse has been trusted by readers almost forty years and rarely does the company truly disappoint its audience.
Image Comics Is The Current Champion Of The Indie Market
Image Comics started in 1992, when Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Erik Larson, Marc Silvestri, Whilce Potracio, and Jim Valentino left Marvel and started their own company. Since then, Image has put out some of the best indie books of all time. The publisher has went through a lot of changes since its founding, going from an artist-driven company to one more known for having comics' greatest writers on board.
Image is the current poster child of the indie comic scene. Nearly every big creator at Marvel and DC has put out an Image book. Some of its properties have also seen mainstream multimedia success, being adapted into movies, TV shows, video games, and more.