The troubles are compounding at IDW Publishing as Heather Antos continues to bring in her neopotistic circle for more identity politics at the company while they struggle to sell comics.
IDW Publishing has had a lot of troubles in recent years, from years of losses to a restructuring where they had to lay off most of their employees. All the while, Heather Antos seemed to fail upward in her career, getting promoted in the wake of all the removals in positions higher than her. This year has been particularly troubling as comics haven’t done much outside their relaunch of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to move the needle, again relying on an “all-new #1 first issue” to drive collecting speculation.
Antos has become the head of licensing at the company and group editor of Star Trek, which was also forced to end its line she created and reboot with completely new concepts, trying to tie in nostalgia with a Voyager continuation and bringing back Captain Kirk from the dead. Antos hired the same creative teams to work on these as the last books that failed, keeping within neopotistic circles as she typically does with her hiring practices.
Last year, Antos virtue signaled by joining a Kickstarter project titled, “When I Was Young… (An LGBTQIA+ Charity Comic Anthology),” with an apparent aim at youth and highlighting stories pushing sexual deviancy and mental illness on children.
The charity involved is The Trevor Project, an organization that explicitly targets underage children to try to pair adults who are looking to get close to children as their stated mission. The website’s main page says they “ensure that all LGBTQ young people have supportive adults in their lives.”
It was spearheaded by a man pretending to be a woman who goes by the moniker “Michel Abounader.” The concept was very creepy, with the theme being about adults grooming children into LGBTQ lifestyles. To make matters worse, the When I Was Young… anthology has a cover that appears to have a topless adult woman making a kiss toward an underage female who didn’t seem to be happy to be the subject of statutory rape.
Now, Abounader has apparently been hired by IDW Publishing after remaining in Antos’ orbit for the last year.
In a post to BlueSky, Antos said, “Thrilled to have [Michele Abounader] join the team,” in response to his post where he says, “I work here now.”
It’s not clear exactly what the project is the man’s working on. In the comments on the orignial post he has a back and forth with Antos acting playful and childish about the job offering:
And on top of it, he also let his audience know, “I’m still gay.”
It’s unclear why he would signal that when it was obvious to begin with.
This marks more of an identity politics push from IDW Publishing that’s been going on for the last several years. It seems as if they’re just adding more of the same potential losses to their stables.
What do you think of this hire?
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Who the hell even reads comics anymore?
Comics have become what Trek has been for a while: Something that people CLAIM they like/consume, because they want to be seen as part of a particular socioeconomic consumer group.
“Oh yeah, I tooootally loooove Trek/comics! I’m such a nerd teehee!”
But as the numbers show, nobody actually does. Because it’s trash.
IDW will close its doors or get swallowed up by a bigger, better publisher in 2026.