Comics Disassembled: Ten Things of Note from the Past Week in Comics, Led by IDW’s Big Move

By David Harper

September 24, 2021

The insanity in comics was only at a two or three this week, so everyone can relax. Let’s get to the good stuff that was less insane and more interesting in Comics Disassembled, my look at ten things I liked or didn’t like from the week of comics, led by…more Penguin folk!

1. IDW, Putting on Its Penguin Suit

It’s official: Marvel won’t be by themselves in the Penguin Random House single-issue distribution game. As announced basically minutes after last week’s edition of Comics Disassembled, IDW will be migrating over as well starting on June 1st, 2022. It’s been positioned as a big deal, but by itself, I’m not sure it is one. IDW isn’t moving many needles, and this is a lateral movement if anything. Most readers don’t really care who distributes their comics as long as they get them. And they (should) get them still.

It is interesting from a larger industry perspective, though. Everyone wondered if Penguin Random House was going to get deeper into the distribution game, and sure enough, here they are, getting deeper. If IDW is the next step before Image and BOOM! and whoever else moves over, that’s a bird of a different feather, and it’s a big deal that this reveals officially that PRH isn’t a tourist but an entity that is fully committed to single-issue distribution. We’ll see if it has larger implications going forward. But for now, it’s the move before the move, and the revelation that, as there always is in comics, there is more to come.

2. Marvel, Stepping Back

I thought this was an interesting pair of news items, as Bleeding Cool reported that Marvel’s pulling its own license from IDW when it comes to all-ages comic production, while Disney/LucasFilm are doing the same thing with Star Wars and what IDW was producing there. These deals will end this year, so it’s not something they’ll be scaling down slowly. It’s basically donezo from the jump.

The question of course becomes what is the plan with those? I always thought it was strange that Marvel/Star Wars ever chose IDW as their all-ages licensing partner, because it’s not like they’re especially well-known for all-ages comics (at least in my mind). I’m with Rich’s suggestion that this is probably a Scholastic play sooner rather than later. Marvel knows how they did with the first graphic novels via Scholastic, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was “pretty well!” It would surprise me even less if it was “considerably better than the IDW releases did.” That’s just a guess, but given the avenue that’s been opened up, it feels like the logical next step. Or maybe Marvel doesn’t like money anymore!

That seems unlikely, but we’ll see what happens in the coming months, I’m sure.

The rest of this article is for
subscribers only.

Want to read it? A monthly SKTCHD subscription is just $4.99, or the price of one Marvel #1.

Subscribe Monthly

Or for the lower rate, you can sign up on our quarterly plan for just $3.99 a month, or the price of one regularly priced comic.

Subscribe Quarterly

Want the lowest price? Sign up for the Annual Plan, which is just $2.99 a month.

Annual Plan

Learn more about what you get with a subscription

Already a member? Sign in to your account.

Notable Replies

mark1 says:

September 24, 2021

It’s worth it if only to read a Hibbs’ suggestion that Dav Pilkey and Raina Telgemeier, two of the most successful people in comics history, would see three to five times the sales of their collections if they were “serialized in an efficient way.”

Oh man, I got a hard laugh out of that.
michael2 says:

September 24, 2021

I used to have a lot of respect for Hibbs - but the past 3-4 years he’s really turned into a broken “old man shouting at the sky”

His Dav/Raina line is so profoundly wrong and iggnorant that I can’t wrap my head around how he runs a business successfully. The bookstore and scholastic book fair market (I haz a kid FYI) is so profoundly different than the tiny niche Wednesday Warrior crowd.

You can buy Dogman at Target and Walmart. At a great price point which delivers a compelte and satisfying story. Kids love it. Parents are ok with it. Great win for all involved.

And he thinks they’d sell MORE copies if they sold them at HIGHER price point for a NOT-Complete Story that was more of a pain in the ass to buy? (Instead of 1 trip to target (for a parent who isn’t even the target audience!) it’s 4 trips on specific dates before sell outs?)…

Like… WTF is going on in his head? That’s just really profoundly out of touch with reality. He should be embarassed. I’m embarassed for him.
michael2 says:

September 24, 2021

And sorry - more on Hibbs…

But he even says this next point IN HIS OWN BOOKSCAN COLUMN!

Marvel GN’s sell poorly not because the audience isn’t there - but becuase Marvel has no idea how to market, package, stock, printing, and distribute it’s Trades.

Marvel is embarassignly (really really embarassingly) poor at managing thier backlist. Marvel could absolutely sell more GN’s of most books than they could of their wednesday floppy books but their internal production team is so broken and stuck in the past that they can’t right now.

I’ve been meaning to start a short column (maybe we should talk!) that weekly highlights a book/storyline that Marvel should treat as a perennial seller, package properly (with suggestions on how to package it) and keep it in print forever.

Just off the top of my head… 3 Volumes of FM DD, FM Wolverine, BWS Weapon X, 3 Volumes of AoA, 3 volumes of complete Jim Lee X-men, Kraven’s Last Hunt, McFarlane Torment, Infinity Gauntlet, Secret Wars, Civil War, House of M, Maximum Carnage, etc.

They are out there. But it’s a matter of making the trade dress and key information cyrstal clear.
chrisburton says:

September 25, 2021

What I take from the Hibbs stuff is that he is dependent economically on the single issue market, and he is worried that changes to that market will lead to his eventual demise as a business. I do think he says that to a degree, and I totally get that, but I think where he loses people (other than the retailers of a similar demographic) is when he says, effectively, “old way good, new way bad.” That is just too simplistic, I think. Big companies like Marvel and DC, owned by mammoth corporations, are about one thing- making money. I don’t think they would be making the changes they have made if it wasn’t in their best interests financially. I have no doubt that DC and Marvel came out better financially by switching distribution to Lunar and PRH. Hibbs should adapt too to keep up with modern sensibilities and expectations, because it seems stubbornly trying to stick to the old ways can lead to a business ending up in the graveyard with Blockbuster, Borders, Tower Records, the newspaper business, print magazines, Sears, Toys R Us, etc.
soupytoasterson says:

September 25, 2021

Hibbs definitely means well, but really biffed it on his article this time. There’s good points made, but it all gets tainted by the rotten, bad take at the core, and it causes a ripple effect where you question the rest of the opinions offered, no matter how well experienced or sourced.