Another Giant Quarterly Loss Leads IDW Publishing To Pivot Away From Heather Antos Controlled Licensed Comics And Make Bible Stories

IDW Publishing isn't doing well even with the recent TMNT relaunch and holding the Star Trek comics license. Is Christian fiction the way forward?

IDW Publishing had another quarterly shareholder call, revealing a financial disaster for the company and a pivot to a new way forward because Heather Antos's current model, which is heavily focused on licensed comics, is failing.

Despite a brand new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 issue garnering over 300,000 in sales this summer, IDW Publishing doesn’t have much to fall back on other than the gimmick of that “all-new collector’s #1 issue” to generate more revenue for the company. Industry insiders report that the company doesn’t have that many profitable books outside of the TMNT, and the embattled company has been in constant struggle in recent years. Moreover, despite the sales, IDW was said to have overpaid for the talent on the recent Turtles relaunch, making the profitability not as high as they had hoped.

The summer comic book failure led to co-publisher Mark Doyle and their Book Trade Marketing Manager being sacked. This marked yet more firings after multiple rounds of layoffs over the last couple of years due to the company’s failure to generate profits . Over 40% of IDW’s staff was laid off during this period.

Q2 2024 is the most recent reporting period for IDW Publishing, and it showed a disaster despite all the layoffs. According to a recent report, the comic book company lost another $900,000, piling on top of losses going back to 2022. It seems their current strategy cannot right the ship.

Part of the problem in comics has been that activist Heather Antos has been continually promoted through the rounds of firings. As an editor and head of licensing, she’s made terrible decisions that led to properties like My Little Pony abandoning IDW and nearly losing the Star Trek license, which was only saved because there were no other buyers. IDW oddly keeps her even through all of the turmoil.

Bleeding Cool reported on the recent problems via an investor’s call. David Jonasi said, "When I came into IDW about 16 months ago, the company was in a pretty precarious spot. They had gotten back down to a place where they were pretty low on cash. By the time we were able to staunch the bleeding, the company had gone from the start of the year at about ten and a half million in cash to about three and a half million."

He continued, "We've confidently turned things around and feel that we're on a path of profitability, we are already profitable and believe we will be sustainably profitable. As well as the engine for future growth that required a lot of hard decisions and reduction in force and other cuts to the company's budget."

During the call, he also discussed a new direction for IDW Publishing, veering away from licensed properties as that model hasn’t proven profitable. This move takes a lot of power away from Heather Antos, who remains at the company. The direction, though, is a somewhat odd choice.

IDW is going to be building its own superhero universe. It is more than late to the party to start this initiative in 2024 when the superhero market is already bloated and flooded. On top of this, they’ll be doing crime comics. But the strangest announcement from Jonasi is that the comic publisher wants to do Bible stories. Jonasi said the initiative will generate "a whole new audience and bring the talent tent of the comic industry and mesh it with the religious community… which is a large book-buying community." He continued, "Just seeing the success of religious cinema… a huge element of growth."

While doing Bible stories would be applause-worthy if they indeed do so accurately and promote Christianity, IDW currently has an image problem caused by Heather Antos, who’s turned the company into a lot of LGBTQ+ activism through her Star Trek line, used a tagline in recent marketing to indicate the mark of the beast, mocked Christ on her social media, and recently was spotted at a convention wearing a “Hail Satan” t-shirt.

IDW has an image problem. It won’t do well in the Christian community without making moves that actually exemplify Christ among its staff. If it wants growth among those readers, it will have to make changes and bring in talent that actually honors Christ and His message.

What do you think of IDW Publishing’s moves and recent losses? Leave a comment and let us know.

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