Millennium Publications was an American independent comic book publishing company active in the 1990s.
Initially known as a publisher of licensed properties, Millennium adapted works by Arthur Conan Doyle, Lester Dent, Robert E. Howard, Harlan Ellison, H.P. Lovecraft, and Anne Rice; and even adapted television series like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Wild Wild West into comic book form. The company expanded its repertoire of horror comics into original titles in the mid-1990s, and further branched out in its later years to embrace the alternative comics genre, starting a short-lived creator-owned imprint called Modern Comics.
Millennium gave early exposure to comics artists such as Darryl Banks, Brian Michael Bendis, Dean Haspiel, Adam Hughes, Michel Lacombe, David W. Mack, Josh Neufeld, Rik Levins, and Mike Wieringo; and utilized industry veterans like John Bolton, Mark Buckingham, Don Heck, Kelley Jones, Jim Mooney, Rudy Nebres, Steve Stiles, and Roy Thomas. Covers were occasionally provided by such notable creators as Brian Stelfreeze, Timothy Truman, and Doug Wildey.
The company was distinctive in that it mostly published one-shots and limited series, with only a couple of their titles running for more than four issues. In many ways representative of the boom period of independent comic book publishing, Millennium thrived in the early years of the 1990s and fell on lean times as the decade came to a close.
Publishing history
Origins
Millennium Publications was founded in 1990 in Tampa, Florida, by Mark Ellis, Melissa Martin, and Paul Davis, with Ellis serving as editor, and his wife Melissa as vice-president and art director. Co-founder Davis also edited and wrote a number of titles, especially in the period 1990 to 1995.
The company's first offerings, in 1990, were the anthology series Anne Rice's The Mummy, inspired by her novel, The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned, with contributions from the likes of Ellis, Tony Harris, Mario Hernandez, and Jim Mooney, among others. The Mummy ran 12 issues in all, making it the company's longest-running title. Also published in 1990 was The Wild Wild West: The Night of the Iron Tyrants, a four-issue "sequel" to the TV series co-written by Davis and Ellis with art by Robert Lewis.
In 1991, Millennium debuted a series of comics titles featuring Lester Dent's Doc Savage, including an ongoing anthology that ended up running nine issues; it featured work by Ellis, Banks, Harris, Adam Hughes, Brian Stelfreeze, Steve Stiles, and Doug Wildey, among others. Ellis wrote the four-issue limited series Doc Savage: The Monarch of Armageddon, drawn by Darryl Banks, which was assessed by The Comics Buyer's Guide Catalog of Comic Books as coming the "closest to the original, capturing all the action, humanity, and humor of the original novels". In 1992, Ellis and Banks teamed up for another Doc Savage limited series, Manual of Bronze, which ran for two issues.
Also in 1991, Ellis conceived and scripted the critically acclaimed Nosferatu: Plague of Terror, a four-part series that provided a complete story of the title character's origin quite apart from the Dracula legend. Finally, Ellis again turned to adapting and expanding another writer's concepts (H.P. Lovecraft), with the three-issue limited series Cthulhu: The Whisperer in Darkness, which featured the first appearance of the Miskatonic Project.
In 1992-93, Millennium introduced another Anne Rice-related project, Anne Rice's The Witching Hour, which ran for five issues, the first four of which were co-published with Comico: The Comic Company. The title was intended to run 13 issues but only made it to issue #5 before being canceled.
The company's three-issue Asylum horror anthology (published under its Borderland emblem) included reprints of Archie Comics' 1970s Red Circle Sorcery series, and featured the talents of Vicente Alcazar, John Bolton, T. Casey Brennan, Mark Buckingham, Howard Chaykin, Duncan Eagleson, Neil Gaiman, Pia Guerra, Don Hillsman II, Matt Howarth, Carlos Pino, and Al McWilliams, among others.
In addition, again with Ellis as scripter, Millennium adapted the cult classic horror film It! The Terror from Beyond Space into comics form. Ellis and Banks teamed up again to produce two issues of Justice Machine, a superhero title that had previously been published by Comico Comics and Innovation Publishing, among others.
