IDW's Having Problems Again-Layoffs and New Bosses

I...guess this deserves it's own thread.

Yesterday, IDW announced it was cutting 39% of it's staff. And delisting itself from the New York Stock Exchange, meaning it will no longer be a publicly traded company. And announced they'll be getting a new CEO and Editor in Chief (...which makes...Four(?) in the last ten years?)

The list of people laid off include Tom Waltz, who used to be the writer for the TMNT comic. This seems to be more laying him off from his editor position, as he'll still be writing for the Last Ronin comics.


And some reactions from those who were laid off.

Now, this might buy them a few extra years by saving them money...maybe. But...it sure isn't looking good for them, right now. It's not exactly a "death knell", but it's probably a..."death tap" or a "death brush" or something.

*Looks over at the poor, possibly-doomed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, My Little Pony, and Sonic the Hedgehog licenses* *SIGH*

My heart goes out to all those who lost their jobs.

It's sad that things have to go down like this.

That said, if there is even the slightest possibility of IDW staying alive, this doesn't necessarily hurt that chance. While their "W-we totally meant to do this, guys. We don't want to be on the NYSE anyway!" talk is a desperate attempt at a positive spin, it is true that being on the NYSE isn't free. This does alleviate some non-trivial overhead that they really never needed.

Despite a few half-hearted tries, they never really managed to grow beyond being a licensed product company. That put them completely at the mercy of the licensors, who are not known for mercy.

---Dave

I know there's been a bit of discussion about IDW in the "main" comic book thread, but I'm going to put this in here. Since, this is kind of a special thread for this kind of thing.

It seems like IDW is cancelling a bunch of creator-owned books that they hadn't even solicited yet, after all the creators were in the middle of working on them.


This is a bad look for the company. It's a scummy move to greenlight a book, have the artists and writers work on it for months...and then just back out at almost the last minute. I assume the creators can still shop these books around to different companies like Dark Horse or Boom, but it's just a unprofessional thing to do.

And it kind of makes IDW look like they're in even WORSE financial shape than some might have thought. If they don't even have the money to PRINT some of these books that they no longer believe will sell...it's just a bad sign.

It seems the creators have full rights so at least they have a chance to pitch their books elsewhere. It would be way worse if IDW canned the books but sat on the rights.

But yeah. It's another sign that IDW is barely clinging to existence at this point.

It still seems strange, if only because, unlike Dreamwave (which had the niche high-fantasy Warlands and the just-getting-started cyberpunk-meets-Avenging-Bride Fate of the Blade as in-house lines when the bill came due), IDW had 30 Days of Night, which was a big multimedia franchise in the latter aughts.

From what I gathered about IDW is that they spent far to long chasing license deals and streaming deals, only to find that, it amounted to very little, so they could close their doors tomorow and nothing of real value would of been lost, the direct market of comics in the west has been in terminal decline for years now, the media outlets that try to show that the market is healthy and alive are only showing false data as much of the sales is actually manga not western comics as things just fallen apart, Disney doesn't care about Marvel comics, its only generating chump change for them, same with DC, so IDW collapse is likely to happen sooner or later as they got nothing to keep them going and should they go bust, the only real valuable stuff is the offices and everything in there!

And we have another round of people being let go, this time mostly from higher level positions.

Supposedly, this means that IDW's entire HR department is now gone. But, I guess when you have almost no employees left, other than independent contractors, you don't really need a big HR department.

They also recently lost the guy who was responsible for their oversized "artist editions" of books. Although, I think that was his own choice.

So, not a great couple of days for IDW.

They probably could function without any of these positions if they had any money. But they don't.

At this point I just need them to stick around long enough to release the hardcover collection of TMNT up until ots soft reboot.

*SIGH* Reset the counter. IDW just lost another Editor-in-Chief.

Something must be happening behind the scenes for them to lose a EIC almost every other year like this. I just find it morbidly fascinating at this point, I guess.


Oh, also, does anyone remember Canto? I believe I mentioned it as one of IDW's attempts to create their own line of creator-owned books a while back. It's a pretty solid little alternate high-fantasy take on the Wizard of Oz. I actually kind of recommend it. It's fun.

...Well, it moved to Dark Horse for what will probably be it's final volume. Just like how Usagi Yojimbo moved back to Dark Horse.
(and the very first issue, for contrast)


Neither of these are really big problems for IDW. They still have their big licenses to keep them afloat like TMNT, Sonic, and MLP. But, I guess I'm just updating this for the sake of history, at this point.

I believe IDW is having a lot of money problems in resent years and the US comic market, is in STEEP decline and likely the reason the creator taken his series to another company, is to get paid on time, they may have the licenses to Sonic, TMNT & MIP but for how long, what if the owners decide to move the comics to another publisher, if that happens, then IDW will likely collapse and we would have another Dreamwave sitution, where artists and writers, haven't been paid

Well they just made a big thing about relaunching TMNT and it seems like #1 is pre-selling well.

Maybe we'll find out that IDW was bloated beyond sanity and actually can function just fine with the staff they have left.

I do read TMNT and love what they've been doing with it. I love the characters that have been created under the IDW banner (Jennika, Alopex, Lita) and would hate to see the world IDW created go away.

That said, if they're going to have the license taken away from them and given to someone else, now would be a good time. They just finished not just another story arc, but their doing a soft reboot with a new issue #1. Best to pull the cord now before they get too deep into anything new.

And since (to my understanding) Nickelodeon still owns characters created under IDW (Jennika, Alopex), we shouldn't run into another Ninjara situation.

So I guess my takeaway is that as much as I'd hate to lose the IDW TMNT world, nows the time to do it. It would be far from the first time TMNT changed publishers.

Honestly, TMNT is probably the safest of the licenses they have. I think that's still their biggest seller. Even if they have to start letting different licenses go because they can't pay the fees anymore, they'll probably prioritize keeping TMNT around over everything else they have. It's probably their biggest property. And it's probably their most stable property. I don't know if IDW can really afford to let TMNT go.

Everything else? I'm not as sure.

I honestly don't know how well the Godzilla comics actually sell, even though I enjoy those, too. MLP doesn't have a ongoing anymore, but they're doing multiple miniseries at the same time, so it might be doing pretty decent. I don't read the Star Trek comics, but they do have a big event right now.

And then there's Sonic. I find it odd that they just...stopped releasing issues of the ongoing comic while the "Fang the Hunter" miniseries was coming out. Could they not pay two sets of licensing fees at the same time? Did Sega not want a "Classic" and "Modern" comic coming out at the same time? It was a weird choice. Maybe I'm reading too much into that, though. *Shrug* I don't know what to make of that.

But, IDW basically is back to having nothing of much appeal beyond their licensed comics. That's always a little dangerous for a comic publisher. But, they've been doing that for years, at this point. They do know how to make it work. And it's not like their "creator owned" stuff really made a lot of waves, admittedly.

So, IDW's probably fine, for now. We'll have to see what happens in a few years. But, there's no reason to think IDW will suddenly collapse overnight, either. They're...as fine as they usually are, I guess.

And now, Hasbro is taking the Dungeons and Dragons comics license away from IDW and giving it to Dark Horse.

But, they're also taking the Magic the Gathering license from Boom and giving it to Dark Horse, too. So, I don't know if it's for any other reason than because it's easier to have most of these licenses under one roof. The Transformers and GI Joe comics are successes, and Hasbro probably wants Dark Horse to try to work that magic on their magical franchises.

For the record, IDW and Boom have made some pretty good fantasy comics from these comics over the years. 80% of the good ones are written by Jim Zub. And I've enjoyed a lot of what they did with these comics in the past. I don't think there's anything stopping them from continuing a few stories in the new comics, though. So, I'm sure Jim Zub will be getting a call soon.

Also, check out the second D&D Saturday Morning Adventures miniseries. It features the 80s kids crossing over with Drizzt, which is just a lot of fun if you're a fan of both.

And a few more people are getting laid off. Including their last remaining Publisher.
IDW really should be VERY streamlined at this point. I'm not sure how many contracted employees they have left that they could actually let go of anymore. This may be the last round of lay offs for a while.

If they dropped their publisher: it might be the last round of layoffs ever.