According to various news reports, IDW lost $800,000 in Q4, and $5.2M for 2019. Worse, they're not expecting to be profitable for 2020, either. They promise a return to profitability in 2021.
From the story above it appears that IDW operates in the $20M range, so $5M probably hurts! (For Disney, it would be pocket change.) I'm no expert, but it appears what's hurting IDW was their move a couple of years ago into movie/TV production, as well as gaming. I think that's what the story means by "legacy" costs -- the price of gearing up in these new (and expensive) areas. That's just guesswork on my part, though.
I don't know anything about their games, but October Faction and Locke and Key (both on Netflix this year) are produced by or with IDW.
It's disturbing, to say the least. IDW is promising profitability down the road, which is nice, but they would say that regardless of the truth, to hold on to investors. So they might be profitable in 2021, or they could be in a downward spiral. And if the latter, it could hurt comics, the hobby we're all here for. IDW is in the top five of publishers and if they tank it would hurt the industry.
Not to mention the loss of some cool books.
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Every time I hear something about IDW it’s bad news. At least they promise “a return to profitability in 2021.”
“…but they would say that regardless of the truth, to hold on to investors. “
Oh, sure… go ahead and dash cold water on my hopes.
“Not to mention the loss of some cool books.”
I selfishly want them to stay in business for their “Library of America Comics” series, if for no other reason. They are two volumes shy of completing Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy. Volume 10 of Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon is supposed to ship this week. (I suspect they plan to stop at 11 because the bindings spell “S… T… E…” etc. I don’t know how many volumes it will take to complete Little Orphan Annie, but Harold Gray remained on the strip until his death in 1968, and IDW is in the early/mid ‘50s.
I am choosing to remain optimistic, but I IDW does go out of business, I’m hoping another reputable publisher picks up the “Library of America Comics” series. (Dark Horse maybe…?)
...How many years does each volume cover of Steve Canyon? What I'm asking there, really, is how late into the strip's life does it look like they're going. The strip lasted 38 or so years, my rough memory days, and it seemed unlikely they'd have 3&1/2 years per volume, so is it 2 years or so per volume, fading out at some to.e in the Nixon/Vietnam era, when arguably the strip got a little old-fashioned - and more practically, adventure continuies' popularity and space granted to them in.newspspers began to go down???
Look at me, talking like I know the strip very well. Not very. I grew up in the New York City metropolitan area, and by the time I was old enough to really notice it, there was no regular daily newspaper carrying Steve either in New York proper or in Westchester County to the north, where we lived, that carried Milt's masterpiece.
A few years ago, I got a volume of a Steve reprint series that was in sort of M
magna size, in b&w. I guess this IDW series supplanted it? In the early days of the comics shop market, there was a Warren-size B&W series of a few years later. I recall the more purist Kitchen Sink series in monochrome , which also first-time-ever showed " beyond the panel lines " unpublished parts of the art. Was that comeplete/ed? I bought my father one volume of the KD Steve series (where Steve adopts Potter) one year as a gift, as I bought him volumes - Just single ones, I'm afraid - Money, I guess:-(. - of that era.
I was living in Green Bay, WI, in the last days of the strip. I didn't avidly flow it. Perhaps do more than noted it...cadualky/sort-of followed? It was in the #2 paper there. In the ship's last days I think Mild deal with the character's ' And his? - age with sequences with I think Steve imagining himself in an earlier era as a young person, but actually older than he would have to have been to be a, what, mid-/late-twentysomething WWII vet when the strip started, as I guess he would have been. Even early thirties, too young to be a later teenager%young adult in the Roaring Twenties, which I recall the " Steve dreams..." S
strips had him fantasizing. I recall a storyline where Steve and a female a standard overnight in Steve's jalopy or something and, though the circumstances are innocent, they are almost forced into a wedding. Does anyone else here remember this? We're these late-late strips ever reprinted?
I remember, after Caniff's death, the last Sunday strip showing as a farewell a parody of a famous Bill Maudlin drawing, with characters saluting a giant drawing pen being buried rather than a Jeep as Bill's drawing did. At the time I told my father about it, I wondered if there would be a poster of that but if there was I don't know...Maybe I thought to send the clipping to my father but I didn't.
Kitchen Sink Press published 21 magazine-size editions, then switched to softcover tpb format for #22-25 through 1956.
A publisher called Checkerbooks published comic-size tpbs starting from the beginning, but they didn't get even as far as KSP did.
And the anthology Comics Revue published Steve Canyon for years.
The IDW volumes, of which there are nine, designated by letter (as I mentioned Monday) cover two years each.
S = 1947--1948
T = 1949--1950
E = 1951--1952
V = 1953--1954
E = 1955--1956
C = 1957--1958
A = 1959--1960
N = 1961--1962
Y = 1963--1964
I expect another two volumes, but Steve Canyon lasted well beyond 1968.
Read some more IDW news on Bleeding Cool, which although a rumor site, seemed to back up this info with some research. Namely that IDW has fired a dozen or so people. This despite receiving more than $1 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans and raising $12.3 million in its latest round of financing.
How deep is the hole they're in?
If they fired people, they're going to have to pay that PPP loan back.