IDW's Having Problems Again-Layoffs and New Bosses

[ZakuConvoy]

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.

IDW Cuts Two-Fifths of Employees, Executives, Stock Exchange Listing

New IDW CEO Davidi Jonas, states "today we hit reset" as IDW drops off the stock exchange and fires two-fifths of staff.

bleedingcool.com

IDW Layoffs In More Detail As New EIC And Co-Publishers Named

Earlier today, I reported IDW laying off two-fifths of its staff. Here's a list of a number of employees who have been let go, and those promoted.

bleedingcool.com

Jamie S Rich, Mark Doyle & Tara McCrillis Heading Up IDW Going Forward

There have been no official announcements, but sources tell Bleeding Cool that Jamie S Rich is the new Editor-In-Chief of IDW.

bleedingcool.com

Comics publisher IDW "hits reset" by laying off 39% of its staff and appointing a new CEO

The company hopes the staff cuts will save $4.4 million per year

www.gamesradar.com

IDW Hit With Layoffs, Removes Itself From the New York Stock Exchange

IDW Publishing's parent company, IDW Media Holdings, is cutting over a third of its workforce, and also de-listing the company's publicly listed stock

www.cbr.com

And some reactions from those who were laid off.

Those Laid Off By IDW Publishing, Respond To The News

Yesterday I broke the news about San Diego-based comic book publisher, and TV/Film/Games producer, IDW laying off two-fifths of its staff.

bleedingcool.com

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.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

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.

 

[Dvandom]

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

 

[ZakuConvoy]

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.

Why IDW Cancelled Creator-Owned Comics Before They Were Even Announced

IDW have been informing a number of comic book creators that their greenlit creator-owned comics will no longer be published there.

bleedingcool.com

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.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

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.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

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.

 

[Superomegaprime]

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!

 

[ZakuConvoy]

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

Major Redundancies Hit IDW Publishing Tonight

I am being told of many redundancies tonight at IDW, the Californian-based comic book publisher and TV/movie producer

bleedingcool.com

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.

Scott Dunbier Confirms His Last Day At IDW Will Be This Friday

Scott Dunbier has just confirmed that he is leaving IDW Publishing after 16 years as Special Projects Editor. "My last day will be on Friday"

bleedingcool.com

So, not a great couple of days for IDW.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

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

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

Deep sigh.

 

[Confuzor]

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