Donors: Mike Richardson ('77) Founder and President, and Neil Hankerson ('72) Executive Vice President Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

After graduating with a degree in art from Portland State University in 1977 where he played basketball for the Vikings, in the mid-1980s, Mike Richardson established himself as a business leader in the Portland metropolitan area with a successful chain of retail comic-book shops he founded. In 1986, he invested profits from his chain of bookstores and with that money founded Dark Horse Comics, Inc. Richardson determined early on that great stories were great stories no matter the medium in which they're told. This belief led him to explore the world of filmmaking and he established his own filmmaking company, Dark Horse Entertainment, in 1992. The company's first major film, The Mask was a huge success and among others, includes the critically and commercially successful feature film, Hellboy.

Today Dark Horse Comics, Inc. is the third largest comic-book publisher in the U.S. and is recognized as the world's leading publisher of licensed comics material. Hero Illustrated magazine named Dark Horse founder Mike Richardson "the most important person in comics." In 2006 Portland State University named Richardson as an "Outstanding Portland State University Alumnus."