Dark Horse Comics

Dark Horse Comics
Founded	1986[?]

Dark Horse Comics is a prominent American comic book publisher and manga translator. It was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon. The company translated the Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia on October 23, 2018, in partnership with Nintendo, after successfully translating several The Legend of Zelda books. Subsequently, the company translated The Art of Super Mario Odyssey on October 22, 2019.

History

Dark Horse publishes a variety different comics and manga, including Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Predator, RoboCop, Planet of the Apes, Astro Boy, Ghost in the Shell and Akira. Prior to publishing Super Mario books, Dark Horse had translated The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, The Legend of Zelda: Arts & Artifacts, The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Creating a Champion, all for the Legend of Zelda series.

Controversy

Main article: Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia § Plagiarism

Following the release of the English translation of the Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia, Dark Horse Comics was criticized for using fan names for enemies and characters lacking official English names. Transliterated Japanese names for some enemies were taken as well, resulting in inconsistent names for the Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins enemies. The book also contained numerous translation errors, such as conflating different enemy species as the same species, as is the case for Spoing and Scuttlebug.

To a further extent, the book used conjectural and foreign names for certain characters and enemies from sites such as Super Mario Wiki and Mario Wikia. For instance, Winged Strollin' Stus are erroneously referred to as "Soarin' Stus" due to the conjectural name being used prior to an actual name, whereas Lumacomète possesses the character's official French name for a lack of an English name, among various other errors.