SelfMadeHero is an independent publishing house which specialises in adapting works of literature, as well as producing ground-breaking original fiction in the graphic novel medium.
It also began publishing the Graphic Biography series with Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness, which has further expanded to tell the fascinating life stories of era-defining pop-culture icons such as Hunter S. Thompson and Nick Cave.
Since 2010 SelfMadeHero has been publishing original material, notably Glyn Dillon's The Nao of Brown, The Motherless Oven trilogy by Rob Davis.
[11] The award was originally founded by Myriad Editions in 2012, and is now described as :[...]a partnership between the Cartoon Museum, the publisher SelfMadeHero, and independent graphic novel editor Corinne Pearlman, former Creative Director at Myriad Editions, with thanks to generous support from the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) and The bks Agency, sponsors of the £500 prize for the winning entry.
Of SelfMadeHero's two initial lines, it was Manga Shakespeare and its first two titles (Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, which were published simultaneously in January 2007) that contributed most to establishing the company.