In 1980 Mullaney moonlighted as co-editor of the brand-new hobbyist publication Comics Feature, produced by Hal Schuster's New Media Publishing, but left after one year to focus on Eclipse.[9]
In the early 1980s, Mullaney met writer-editor Catherine Yronwode, who was working for cartoonist and entrepreneur Will Eisner. Yronwode recalled that Eisner and his wife Ann "hosted a party for me with all these comic book men I was flirting with. All these men came up; they all wanted to meet Will. One of them was Dean Mullaney, the co-owner of Eclipse Comics, a small independent publishing house. He was the most flirtatious." At some point afterward, once Yronwode finished her work organizing Eisner's archives, she and Mullaney became engaged and moved to California, where they were married.[10]
By the late 1980s, Eclipse was selling a half-million comics a month, and was the third largest comics publisher after Marvel Comics and DC Comics.[11]
In 1986, Eclipse lost most of its back-issue stock in a flood.[12] This event, along with the repercussions of Mullaney's divorce from Yronwode, by then his partner at Eclipse, and the mid-1990s collapse of the direct market distribution system, caused the company to cease operations in 1994[13][14] and file for bankruptcy in 1995.[15] The company's intellectual property rights were later acquired by Todd McFarlane.[16] Mullaney also attributed the company's demise to a problematic contract with the book publisher HarperCollins.[17] Eclipse's last publication was its Spring 1993 catalog, which was a complete bibliography of its publications.
In the mid-2000s, Mullaney approached IDW Publishing with a proposal to publish hardcover reprints of American comic strips. This became the IDW imprintThe Library of American Comics, which debuted with the 2007 book The Complete Terry and the Pirates, Vol. 1: 1934-1936, by Milton Caniff. As Mullaney described, "Terry's always been my favorite strip, and I was going to publish it in the early '80s (through Eclipse Comics), but Terry Nantier at NBM beat me to it. Luckily, I've lived long enough so that 25 years later I'm in a position to release new editions of Terry."[18] With Mullaney as its creative director, the imprint has gone on to publish collections of strips including Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, Bringing Up Father, Family Circus, and Bloom County.[19]
In 2014, Mullaney added another imprint at IDW, EuroComics, in order to publish new English translations of European comics, including Hugo Pratt’s Corto Maltese, Paracuellos by Carlos Giménez, and Alack Sinner by Muñoz and Sampaya.[citation needed]
In December, 2021 it was announced that LoAC and EuroComics would move from IDW to a new publisher, Clover Press.[20]
Awards
As creative director and editor of The Library of American Comics,[19] Mullaney has won seven Eisner awards and one Harvey Award. Eisner source unless otherwise indicated:[21]
2015 Eisner Award: Best Comics-Related Book: Genius Animated: The Cartoon Art of Alex Toth, vol. 3, by Dean Mullaney & Bruce Canwell (IDW/LOAC)[23]
Mullaney won a 2012 Harvey Award for Best Biographical, Historical or Journalistic Presentation for Genius, Illustrated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth.[24]
^Bails, Jerry; Ware, Hames (eds.). "Dean Mullaney". Who's Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999. Archived from the original on May 11, 2007. Retrieved November 25, 2020.
^"2000s Eisner Award Recipients". San Diego Comic-Con International. 2 December 2012. Archived from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved November 18, 2015.
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