In June 2013, BOOM! Studios acquired Archaia, bringing the company into BOOM!’s growing lines of comics. Part of that deal was a melding of staff, including Mark Smylie, Archaia’s Founder, Publisher, and Chief Creative Officer. Yesterday, BOOM! announced that Smylie would be “transitioning away from the company he founded.”

Smylie will instead focus on his burgeoning writing career among other creative endeavors. Last year saw Smylie’s debut as a novelist with The Barrow from publisher Pyr (an imprint of Prometheus Books). Set in the world of Artesia, the book garnered praise.

In the release Smylie said:

I’m excited by this next stage. I continue to love comics and publishing, and am thrilled to see titles we had worked on acquiring for Archaia hitting shelves this year, including Asaf Hanuka’s The Realist, the upcoming Freaks’ Squeele from the amazing French artist Florent Maudoux, and the hardcover collection of The Last Broadcast from André Sirangelo and Gabriel Iumazark, which former Archaia editor Rebecca Taylor had found and shepherded, beginning almost five years ago. But getting a chance to return to the setting and characters of Artesia in writing The Barrow was a welcome shift, and reminded me of why I had started all this to begin with.

The Barrow’s success will see a sequel, Black Heart, scheduled this November from Pyr.

While at Archaia and during the past two years at BOOM!, Smylie has also been working as a producer, assembling a slate of lower-budgeted features around Archaia back-catalog titles such as Killing Pickman, Black Fire, Black Charity, Starkweather, The Grave Doug Freshley, and Mumbai Confidential, with those efforts now spun off in a separate company, Aegis & Gorgon.

Mark Smylie founded Archaia Studios Press in 2002 as a home for his previously published creator-owned series Artesia. In 2006, he announced he was venturing into publishing third-party material that he did not create, leading to the launch of the long-running Mouse Guard series from David Petersen and the English-language translations of French best-selling series The Killer by Matz and Luc Jacamon.

In 2008, Smylie sold the company and stayed on as an acting principal. In 2009, the publisher was relaunched simply as “Archaia,” going on to win Eisner Awards for the best-selling Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand and The Return of the Dapper Men.

Smylie continued in the release:

It’s been a labor of love helping these creators try to realize their work on-screen. They’re rich creative worlds and stories with what I think is great potential. We’ve always approached the comics-to-film market from a couple of perspectives, both the traditional option/studio-sale model and the indie-financing model, and the indie side was the part that interested me most. Thankfully, when BOOM! came in, [Founder and CEO] Ross [Richie] and the rest of the team continued to encourage my work on the internal development line. I’m excited to be able to dedicate more time to pursue these projects, and getting them past the development stage and into production—as challenging as I know that will be.