Yeah you’re right, it’s the other shit idw licensed and made that really screwed them over.

 

But what if there’s *another* 22 page thread here about how IDW sucks?! Can we declare it’s curtains then?  

 

Then that must indicate IDW is failing, as we are the vast majority of the fandom's opinions.

 

So, just so we're all clear on this, we're all aware that Heather Antos is an editor, not a writer, right? If any of y'all didn't like books she happened to be an editor or assistant editor for, I suspect you wouldn't have liked them without her input either. Just putting that out there, being an editor is a big part of the work that goes into a book but good odds are that you still wouldn't have liked the stories anyway.

 

You imply that idw has anything even remotely resembling a fandom anymore.

Yes and she’s terrible. For how big or little she played in the decline of Star Wars comics (if she did anything else, let me know), either as an editor or writer is not a good sign. Especially with how desperate idw is in hiring a bunch of people to save a sinking ship.

 

Other than Antos and Scott, what other Whisper Network members has IDW Publishing employed?

Edit: Vissaggio

 

Judging by their diversity hire.... Pfftt..

 

Ahhhh. Originally I thought this sense of outrage was about IDW (or even ostensibly the Transformers comics, given this forums purpose), but seems clearer what this was *actually* about. Backing away now.  

 

If you think that’s my main issue with idw, then you’ve missed the point.

 

There's a method of jamming radio signals to missiles called "spoofing" where you basically spam the airwaves that the missile is using to communicate with as much dissonant chatter as possible to cause it to crash and burn. It's interesting to see that happen to a thread in realtime...



I still have no idea what Antos' track record of failure is, but I DO know that Vissaggio's track record as an awful writer is a matter of public record. I question their employment, but I'm not inclined to automatically assume it's a "diversity hire". It could very well be, but I'm not going to assume so.

 

Let me see...Starting in 2015, she was assistant editor on a whole mess of Star Wars comics. I don't know how many issues she worked on per comic. In 2016, she was the primary editor on the comic adaptation of The Force Awakens. See, none of this will really mean anything to you if you didn't any Star Wars comics for the last six years, because I didn't, so I have nothing to go on either, except for the word of angry nerds. Which is famously not very reliable.

Most of her non-Star Wars work for Marvel appears to be Gwenpool and Deadpool comics, and TASM: Renew Your Vows. Again, she was an editor, not a writer, and having not read those comics either I still can't make any judgement.

 

The dumbest shit they did? Phase out a bunch of the Phase 3 artists for the cheaper, less talented 2019 reboot talent who seem to be free to hire and do fill ins and miniseries, but aren't given books the by rights should still be doing.

Art (and story) in the Transformers comics since the reboot has turned one of the best comic book lines on shelves into an unreadable fanfic-quality mess.

 

In fairness to your point, hard sales figures and resume's within the comics industry are very difficult to find. So no. Not at the moment.

In fairness to my point, she's been at 4 different companies in as many years and one would be hard pressed to find a book she's touched that lasted more than 12 issues.

In fairness to antos, the was "a global pandemic" which effected sales across the board. But to her discredit, she has the infamous quote, "pencils down."
(When they should have been blazing)

To me, I associate her name with failure and incompetence. But now that comicbookdb is gone, it's really hard to pinpoint figures. However, I am open to correction.

 

IDW's quarterly earnings statements the past year and change have been a horror show. This is a company that is just surviving, quarter by quarter, and whose profitability and comic sales have declines precipitously over the past decade.

But something has changed for sure. With DC Comics exclusive to Lunar Distribution, and the bombshell six weeks ago of Marvel swapping out of Diamond and to Penguin Random House starting in the fall, it's going to absolutely screw - and I mean absolutely screw - smaller comic book publishers, IDW included.

Diamond's monopoly for most of... what... the past 17 years or so... was convenient for everyone involved as the big two publishers focused ever more on keeping the Direct Market afloat. But the best thing about it was that a comic book store owner could have one account, and one point of contact for all their orders. This saved them significant sums on shipping costs, made returns easy, reduced risk, and also allowed Diamond to extend lines of credit to stores to keep them afloat (something they did last year when the Pandemic started).

But two things changed in the past 10 years.... really the last five.

First DC Comics started dabbling in pulling away from the Direct Market (Comic Book stores) by doing an exclusive line to Walmart on newspaper stock. These comics had their best creators on them, were out of continuity (and timeless) and sold really, really well. At the same time, Warner Bros was bought by AT&T and reorganized. DC saw management changes, and also a mandate from above: you have to pay your own way from this time forward. And DC didn't. At all. When higher ups got word that Dan Didio was going to cause a big storyline that would replace all of DC's heroes with "next generation" replacements, after his previous sales stimulating schemes failed, he was summarily fired. DC ditched Diamond in the pandemic, and then spent 2020 reducing their book count, from around 50 to around 30, and soon probably in the mid 20s.

So what's happening to DC? They're changing their business. There is no future in Direct Market comics. They know this. In the age of these vertically integrated companies where they are an IP factory of the larger Warner Media machine, having a business model built around comic the comic book store afloat is a non-starter. So they're repositioning their business around two things: (1) timeless storytelling that is accessible to all audiences and (2) mass market product. To this end they're doing more reprints, a lot of publishing outside of comic books, and a lot of digital first. Really, they are embracing their future as an IP house that happens to publish some comic books, not a comic book company. Lunar Distribution makes sense as a remnant.

Secondly, Marvel is going through a similar, but slightly different thing. They went from being something Disney just happened to buy to expand it's balance sheet, to DC's most profitable media division, and Marvel publishing is, again, the IP factory. For years it was allowed rather free reign as Ike Pearlmutter remained in charge (nominally) while Marvel Studios did its own thing, but the success of the Avengers films and opportunities for additional use of their IP has seen Disney pull Marvel Publishing in far closer under the Kevin Feige umbrella than it was even a few years ago. This saw, just like DC, their long time E-in-C Axel Alonzo forced out, and in his place, someone who is a comic book traditionalist and company man (my view: Axel Alonzo had to go). Marvel Comics is much more "evergreen" now in terms of its use of its primary characters, which just so happen to be the characters in its movies. But swapping to Penguin Random House was a complete surprise, but entirely expected really. Marvel is now big business. Billion dollar business in the largest media company on earth. It was too big to partner with a family operation line Diamond. It needed to partner with the largest print publisher and distributor on Earth, Penguin Random House.

Make no mistake. This heralds the end of the Direct Market as we know it. Marvel is going to put comic books in book stores and focus ever more on trade paper backs. They will still distribute to the direct market, but they're looking at small book stores (which pre-pandemic were THRIVING), newsstands, Barnes and Nobles, Target and Walmart a lot more.

So what does any of this have to do with IDW? If people start buying comics at Walmart or online, there is no way comic book stores survive as a business. The only reason they made it this far is that Marvel and DC decided to stop selling elsewhere about 15 years ago. This stabilized sales for much of the time since around 2008. They haven't gone up, but not really down anymore. But now, if people are buying elsewhere, how do stores pay their bills? And those bills are going up, because now stores have to pay shipping costs, and keep accounts open with Penguin, Lunar AND Diamond. To put it in perspective, 18 months ago, they would have big deals on shipping costs (Usually freight) because they got big boxes, from one place, once a week. Now it's going to be more than that. They are bills they can't afford to pay.

To a great degree, Marvel and DC, along with certain Image comics like Walking Dead, subsidized the rest of the comic book industry's existence, and channeling it all through Diamond kept costs affordable for the Direct Market. Without Marvel and DC doing that anymore though, what is the point of Diamond, for just Image and smaller publishers? There really isn't one.

Some folks are thinking Diamond may get out of the business entirely. The owners, the Geppi family, got wealthy off and built a successful business of of monopolizing comic book distribution for much of this this century. Diamond's even acted as a creditor for the direct market that sometimes desperately needed it. But there is no way to grow that business anymore. Marvel is never leaving Disney, and Disney's subsidiaries natural partners are other mega-corporations, not family enterprises. DC is probably ~10 years away from exiting the print comic industry entirely, and becoming a weekly digital comic strip + IP company. How does DIamond thrive with lower profits, carrying on just for smaller publishers?

IDW's greatest business mistake is that they let the blossoming partnership with Marvel from last decade completely wither. That was their their route to surviving as a company: being a junior partner to Marvel doing collections, "accessible comics", and retro stuff. Marvel didn't want to do it on its own, so it licensed it out on contract. IDW needed to set itself up to eventually be bought by Marvel, like Malibu COmics was in the 1990s. That is clearly not happening now. Not doing that would have been fine if IDW stood up an alternative, but it didn't.

A good month to look at is October 2020. IDW's top comic was TMNT the Last Ronin #1 at 44,500 units sold, ranked #31. It's next best was Transformers Back to the Future #1, 22,500 at #90, followed by Star Wars Aventure #1 at #92. Going down the list further its TMNT at 101, Snake Eyes at 106, a Batman crossover at 112, Sonic the HEdgehog at 146, My little pony transformers at 162, another sonic book at 172, and finally at 197, with 7600 units, Transformers 84 with 7400 units, Transformers Galaxis at 205 with 7000. The Transformers #23 ongoing wasn't sold that month as it last shipped on 9/30/20, the last day of the month before, and sold a pitiful 6800 units at #195.

IDW is not selling comic books. It's as simple as that. There is no original franchises. It's all licensed works, and most of those aren't selling. What's real disturbing is the magnitude of the decline too. Transformers is more or less selling the same 6000-7000 that it has for a few years. But if you go back to 2016, Transformers is selling between 9000 to 11,000 units. Transformers hasn't gotten less popular, but IDW has significantly reduced its focus on them. Which makes no sense, because the only position they're in, is EVERYTHING needs to sell well.

What will the fate of IDW be? If they get their debt under control, they'll be okay on their own, but the looming day of judgement for all comic book publishers like them is in September, when Marvel leaves Diamond for good. What does that look like in numbers?
This is just Diamond for October 2020 (which is why DC isn't here, as they are through Lunar):



Now lob off hat 54.14% of dollars and the cuts that Diamond takes through its contract with marvel, and tell me how it carries on. Nobody can. That's been the discussion going on for a month. Diamond will carry on for a while by increasing fees to comic book stores and its publishing partners, but in IDW's case, that just increases its expenditures even more.


My 2 cents? IDW needs to merge with Boom or find a buyer, because it's a dead business walking.

 

You're right. One book should not make a break a company. But we're talking about the pernicious influence of MilkShake-1 herself.

I'm a loyal TF fan. I am. But I'm worried here.

 

It's not hard at all.
Comichron: A Resource for Comics Research!
Latest month fully update is October 2020. Just remember things go real weird starting April 2020 with the pandemic and DC leaving Diamond and going to Lunar. And it's going to get weirder again in September 2021 when Marvel leaves Diamond too for Penguin Random House.

 

A lot of that stuff is during the dark reign of Axel Alonso. Almost all of it has gone away in the back-to-basics reign of E-in-C.B. Cebulski, AKA Akira Yoshida.

Alonso wanted a very progressive line that creatively disrupted characters and identities to bring in new readers (who never showed up) by eliminating long term continuity without doing a reboot (e.g, easier to tell the full story of Jane Foster as Thor than the entire 50 years of Thor Odinson).

He got his ass fired for years of failing to deliver on that. He's still quite bitter about it.

Company man C.B. Cebulski got the message from on high: "see the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Do that." And while Marvel has done plenty of creative stuff (see: the Dawn of X stuff going on, and Thor and Avengers), there is a lot less weird shit going on.

 

Even in IDW's lowest moments there was some artistic appeal still. The current ongoing just doesn't have both, there's no appeal in the art or the story. It's just amateurish Ipad artwork combined with a boring on-rails story. It's so displeasing to see since TF has had such a diverse long group of artstyles throughout the legacy of the comics.

I think that's why there's some appeal in the latest BW comic. The artstyle is reminiscent of TF Animated along with a new take on characters that haven't had a comic since 2006. I quite like Josh Burcham's artwork on BW to the contrary to some opinions.

 

I'll be damned.

 

I wrote about this some time ago by offering an example from comics history.

Ever hear the saga of Wolverine's short lived Fang costume? Wolverine's worst costume?




It showed up in Uncanny X-Men #107 in 1977, Dave Cockrum's last issue as artist. He was not happy he was leaving the book, so he gave Wolverine a new costume he created from the Shi'ar Supercommando "Fang" that was intentionally extremely hard to draw in order to create problems for his successor John Byrne. The costume has a specific number of little teeth on the neck, wasit gloves and boots, with small details on the belt and neck. This was a lot of lines, especially for 1977 when comic book artists were expected to produce, monthly, without fillins and lead times like they have today (and also more pages per month).

It's clear why this costume sucks to draw. Imagine doing an entire book of it, 32 pages, and how much longer it takes compared to Wolverine's classic yellow and blue? And that was the point. Cockrum made a design to fuck Byrne's ability to consistently draw the character and do it economically.

Byrne, not being an idiot, realized the game and immediately gave Wolverine his classic yellow and blue, before giving him the even easier to draw brown costume shortly after.

In producing a comic, there is an economy of production. How long does a page take to do? Different artists have different timelines for that, consistent with their styles and tools. An interesting example of this is Bryan Hitch who was a quick, high detail artist in the 1990s and early 2000s (with the Ultimates Volume 1). But with the Ultimates Volume 2 he decided to start drawing his style on a paper stock twice the size, in order to add even more detail, and it slowed him down considerably, and he became someone who couldn't keep deadlines.

All these are for humanoid characters. People with muscles. We're pretty forgiving of those, even poorly drawn, because know what it is supposed to look like. But Wolverine can look good no matter if it is driven by Jim Lee, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, Andy and Adam Kubert, Leinil Francis Yu or Salvador La Rocca. All very different... all quality in their own way.

Transformers are far less forgiving. And we know this from the pin-ups and commissioned art, covers and cross overs of Transformers characters drawn by famous comic book artists who aren't Transformers artists. They don't "know" Transformers and how to draw them, as opposed to superheroes, so it looks bad.

Transformers are just hard to draw. They intrinsically have more lines. They are hard, geometric angles for what is smooth curves on a person. It forces challenges with perspective that are easier to do with humans. They require substantial surface detail to look right, and it's on every page. It's like the Fang Costume times ten. There are different styles, but they're all incredibly work intensive to make look good compared to your average X-men comic.

Most of the crew IDW crew ain't up to the task at all, and they mask it behind "style". That's nonsense. The style exists because they either don't have the talent, or are not able to economically do, a more traditional look for Transformers. That's cutting their gordian knot. Transformers hard to draw? Don't draw them like Transformers then!

Of course, that's half the appeal of reading Transformers comics.

I've always thought that the border marker was Andrew Wildman's classic marvel style. Most Transformers comics we've gotten since they came back with DreamWave have been a good deal more detailed and "Mecha" compared to his, which intentionally humanizes character designs. But that's to make them more relatable and expressive (especially his distinctive faces). His bodies, even if the proportions are different, have all the detail, lines and angles you'd expect of Transformers.

There is no way of knowing for sure, but I've had a theory about why the pre-reboot crew have been shifted to infrequent crossover and fill in jobs while the reboot crew carries on. And this is largely from what I've read about over the years at Marvel. The longer a writer or artist work on a book, their cost-per-page and cost-per-book goes up. This is why some of the greatest comic artists of the last 30 years, still able to produce quickly and at high quality, do not get regular gigs on the books that made them famous: because their asking price, typically set by their agent, disqualifies them. The gold standard of this sad affair is Alan Davis, who has done some of the greatest Marvel stories of the 19780s and at 2000AD, but his last regular Marvel gig was in 2004. Everything since then has been fill inss and mini series. He could have been on X-Men for a decade straight, but he was pricey.

IDW Transformers comics didn't have much artist turnover for like six years or more. After Don vanished, the group the brought aboard stuck around until the end of the continuity. My guess is that those guys, who started cheap, got pricier and pricier. What does that mean money wise? Going from $110 a page (or less) at the start to a $250-$350. That's industry standard from what I've seen and heard. This is, Transformers comics declined in sales at the time. Napkin math, the comics were selling 10,000 units at $3.99 back around 2013, so bringing in $40,000 in revenue a month. When you're selling 6800 units though, that's $27,000 a month. Meanwhile cost of production has gone up.

I think you can tell where this line of thinking is going: why spend $250 per page on a book that sells 6800 units, when you can can spend $110 per page and still sell 6800 units? It adds up. May or may not have gone on here, but it's happened at Marvel and DC. Good chance it happened here.

I think that's what happened though. Early last decade, Transformers was IDW's top book. But by the end of the decade, sales had been cut down by 40% and hit a long term floor of about 7000 units give or take. So they wrap up the story in a rush with "Unicron", do a reboot and recalibrate the costs of production for a book that yields lower revenues than it once did. And of course, with a TMNT book selling 45,000 units, they're felling pretty good about that decision.

Of course, the real issue is how Transformers went from selling 11-15,000 units per book for 4 books in a given month 2009 to 6800 for 2 books in 2019, when comic book sales as a whole have been stable in that time. Heck even New Avengers-Transformers #1 sold 60,000 units. But it would hardly be the only tale of IP mismanagement over the last 15 years that fucked a franchise into the dirt. One just has to look at how DC took the amazing construction that Geoff Johns had built with Green Lantern starting with Rebirth and utterly destroyed it since then. Or how Marvel has badly mismanaged Captain America ever since the Ed Brubaker left. They are, after all, making movies and TV shows off Brubaker's Cap works and not Ta-Nehisi Coates's Cap (Coates' Black Panther has been amazing though).

I'll repeat what I said a while ago: once their licensing deal expires Hasbro needs to move Transformers out of IDW and either do it in-house, as a monthly digital comic through Hasbro Pulse (another reason to subscribe!), or partner with Marvel or DC. IDW has no future.

But that being said, Hasbro is weird with licenses of it's Transformers IP. IDW Transformers just shambles on like a zombie. But meanwhile, AAA console or computer video games almost never happen, and the animated series are increasingly cheaply made (but it the 10 minute Cyberverse episodes, the bad animation of the Prime Wars trilogy, or the cheap talent and short duration of the netflix shows). It really seems like Hasbro isn't all that interested in licensing out stuff besides to Hollywood for movies. So maybe IDW Transformers survives because it's too small to care about.