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Old 06-16-2025, 04:23 PM   #1
CyberCubed
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Bleeding Cool: "IDW says they'll still be around at least another year"

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/idw-...-another-year/

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IDW Publishing is one of those curious publishers, one of the biggest American comic book publishers, which has been through some tumultuous times (and owners) since it was originally founded by former Wildstorm employees. But has given us everything from Locke & Key to 30 Days Of Night to Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees and even League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen when it was too much for DC. But it has had significant problems over the years, has been heavily IP-license based, and has then seen those licenses pulled, like Star Wars, Doctor Who, Transformers and Marvel itself. But, often in the face of my own expectations, it has taken a licking and has kept on ticking. And as a publicly traded company, it has to make its business more transparent than that of its privately owned rivals. Which also means, more reportable.

IDW Expresses Doubt It Will Continue As A Result Of Diamond Bankruptcy

Later today, comic book publisher IDW Publishing CEO Davidi Jonas will hold an earnings conference call and answer questions about the publisher's future and current state. I am not entirely sure that he will ever top the one he made while driving in his car, in which he told investors that if the TV and film plan had worked out, they'd all be on a yacht. But it didn't.

IDW, like all major and minor comic book publishers, have had a rough year, principally down to the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Diamond Comic Distributors. According to their most recent financial report, IDW had to write off $745,000, which was being subdistributed by Diamond Comic Distributors from their exclusive distributor, Penguin Random House. Bleeding Cool previously reported that it looked like Penguin was trying to stick IDW with this sum from the $9 million owed by Diamond to Penguin Random House before bankruptcy, and that this made up 15–20% of its direct market sales via Penguin Random House. With Penguin Random House handling over 80% of IDW's total revenue, IDW is exploring other distribution options. Lunar? Universal? AENT? We wait to find out.

The most recent financial report from IDW, ending the 30th of April 2025, saw revenues of $4.8 million, a 31.5% decrease from $7 million in the same period last year, almost solely due to their publishing of comics. IDW posted a loss of $533,000 for the quarter, which was up from the $893,000 loss in the same period in 2024. However, taking in a full six months, including the Diamond bankruptcy, IDW's loss was $1.7 million, up from $1.1 million for the six months before.

However, they still have plenty of cash available, and IDW Publishing saw its gross margin improve to 42.0% from 38.6%, driven by reduced printing and royalty costs. As we have mentioned before, IDW also cite supply chain disruptions from "Yemen-based Houthi militia attacks on commercial ships transiting the Red Sea" for their international shipping, but are currently unaffected by US tariffs as print is excepted.

As for comics, their revenues decreased by $911,000 in the quarter, compared to the previous year, and they cite"decreases in comic book market publishing revenue of $530,000 driven by prior year sales of
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Re-Evolution and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #150, licensing revenue of $187,000 due to prior year video game activity, direct billing revenue of $159,000 driven mostly by decreased retail incentive orders, direct-to-consumer sales of $140,000, and book market publishing revenue of $138,000, offset by a decrease in sales returns and discounts on book sales of $211,000, and increases in digital sales of $32,000 driven by an increase in Humble Bundle activity."

And that revenues "decreased by $1,877,000 in the six months ended April 30, 2025, compared to the six months ended April 30, 2024, due to decreases in book market publishing revenue of $1,564,000 driven by prior year sales of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Lost Years, direct-to-consumer sales of $242,000 driven by participation in fewer conventions, licensing and royalty revenues of $212,000 due to prior year video game activity, and direct billing revenue of $149,000 driven mostly by decreased Retail Exclusive orders, offset by a decrease in sales returns and
discounts on book sales of $179,000, and increases in digital sales of $111,000 driven by an increase in Humble Bundle activity."

Basically, they didn't have as strong tentpole Turtles titles so far this year as they did with Last Ronin, and TMNT #150, and there aren't as many retailer exclusive covers as they used to have

They have also enacted a 1-for-100 reverse stock split, so every 100 old shares, is converted to one new share, so the amount of shares will reduce from 38 million to 380,000 and the value from around 40 cents to around $40, so the total value doesn't change, but it does look a bit better.

And while they may not have any TV shows in production right now, Locke & Key and Wynonna Earp are still in the air, and they have active discussions underway for projects based on titles such as Kill Lock, Dungeon, The Delicacy, You Wish, Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees, and Exorcism at 1600 Penn, Mountainhead, Arca, and Dark Spaces.

And they do see IDW will be around for at least another year, saying "We anticipate that our expected cash inflows from operations during the next twelve months together with our working capital, including the balance of cash and cash equivalents held as April 30, 2025 will be sufficient to sustain our operations for at least the twelve months following the date of this report. While the Company has experienced negative operating cash flow during certain prior periods, we saw positive operating cash flows in fiscal 2024, and we anticipate recent operating expense reductions, primarily as a result of reductions in force in April 2023, April 2024, and August 2024 will result in future positive operating cash flow." "Reductions in force" is corporate speak for layoffs, of course. The IDW earnings conference call will be held today at 4.30 pm ET.
Man, I just hope they last long enough to finish the Vol. 4 reprints and Archie Adventures Compendiums. Kinda figures just as they start collecting the old Mirage and Archie comics properly, they're on the verge of going bankrupt.

As for the main IDW continuity, if it ever does look like it's over, I hope they get Tom Waltz back to give the series a proper conclusion. He deserves to see it off given he created the universe with Bobby and Kevin.
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Old 06-16-2025, 04:37 PM   #2
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Man, I just hope they last long enough to finish the Vol. 4 reprints
Oof... yeah, the Vol. 4 stuff would require at least 3 years out of IDW. Not looking good there! Maybe you shouldn't be selling your copies.
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Old 06-16-2025, 04:42 PM   #3
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Vol. 4 is most likely, since it's a short run, don't know how far along Adventures they are but perhaps not.
I doubt a conclusion is the thing on their mind, if anything they'd want to have a bigger cliffhanger type story or reboot so that more readers jump in, they just had somewhat of a reboot so..
Also their financials could actually worsen and be over before the year as well, it's not like that's the minimum guaranteed time.

I wonder who will take the TMNT comic license, Boom studios?
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Old 06-16-2025, 04:54 PM   #4
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I wonder who will take the TMNT comic license, Boom studios?
They almost got the license the first time around. But let's hope for Dark Horse!
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Old 06-16-2025, 06:43 PM   #5
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Here's another article, basically they lost $750,000 when Diamond went bankrupt:

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/idw-...-mickey-mouse/

IDW is trying to create new original comic licenses that they own completely, since they mostly do licensed comics they don't get the full sales from like TMNT, Sonic, Star Trek, etc.

Honestly whenever I read these articles I'm honestly confused how any comic company stays in business besides the top properties from DC and Marvel.
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Old 06-17-2025, 12:45 AM   #6
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They almost got the license the first time around. But let's hope for Dark Horse!
Let's hope so. A Hellboy crossover would be rad!
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Old 06-17-2025, 04:03 AM   #7
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I am just glad we will get to see TMNT Battle Nexus comic because they said IDW will be around for at least one more year and this comic starts publishing in October 2025, it could be crossover between different TMNT universes and I still hope IDW will last more than a year

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Old 06-17-2025, 04:50 AM   #8
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Diamond is such a disgrace. The popularity of comic book characters in the past 15 years has skyrocketed. ****ing Ant-Man and Rocket Racoon are household names. There is no excuse for the state of the industry right now. At least 3 local shops have shut down near me in recent years, what a joke.

With IDW specifically, I know those licensing fees aren’t cheap but it’s crazy to me that TLR sells the way it does and they’re struggling like this.
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Old 06-17-2025, 05:09 AM   #9
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Diamond is such a disgrace. The popularity of comic book characters in the past 15 years has skyrocketed. ****ing Ant-Man and Rocket Racoon are household names. There is no excuse for the state of the industry right now. At least 3 local shops have shut down near me in recent years, what a joke.

With IDW specifically, I know those licensing fees aren’t cheap but it’s crazy to me that TLR sells the way it does and they’re struggling like this.
Yes, let's hope IDW will last more than a year, are you also excited for TMNT Battle Nexus comic?
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Old 06-17-2025, 07:04 AM   #10
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Well - the Diamond thing is multi-faceted. So much of the entire industry's problems revolve around padding sales via Ratio Variants everywhere. Diamond sends shipments and as the industry relied more and more on ratio variant orders to get by, you had shops all over ordering titles in wildly uneven quantities often for no other reason than to land certain variants. All of that stresses a distributor at small fractures in the process as they have to match orders that used to be largely homogenized back in the day.

You really have to combine a lot of the information to glean the true picture and that's in conjunction with whatever internal information they have that we don't know about.

Also, these things begin at the creative level. And so we have an industry that is a greater "household name situation" now more than ever before, yet that doesn't exactly translate into comic sales. As a matter of fact, the publishing industry is more confusing and less accessible than it ever was before given that everything is now a glorified mini-series and has been that way for at least 20 years now.

Typical liberal thought processes there - "how do you expect anyone to jump onboard a comic with 300 issues behind it?", and the answer to their own ludicrous question is to relaunch constantly so there's no understanding of what you are looking at in the back issue bins anymore. The point is that the publishers have clearly relied on vertical expansion more than horizontal for years now. That means extracting more dollars from the hanger's on than it does delivering on offerings and new readers. That's the kind of business model that results in a cliff-like drop off of consumer behavior over time.

All of that and I haven't even touched on the infiltrative identity politics that are absolutely an undeniable source of readership revolt - didn't even touch on that.

Comic books are a f'n mess nowadays. Practically unrecoverable and almost all "growth" can be attributed to nostalgia-reprints or extracting more here and there from the hanger's on. And what's worse is that most publishers (most definitely IDW - we've seen it here on the forums) would actually come and deny this for their "social purity test" instead of addressing their business model. That's called "suicide by pride and ignorance". The first time I saw that depth of ignorance in the hobby was when Joe Quesada was EIC and many of his opinions were the foundation for what the situation has become - crazy too because I respect the guys business acumen and despise the hell out of his nonsense at the same time.
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Old 06-17-2025, 09:58 AM   #11
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Yeah, I mean... I haven't even bought any comics in a while now. I think the last thing I bought was TMNT/Stranger Things and Ronin Book Two (which SUCKED).

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Let's hope so. A Hellboy crossover would be rad!
I couldn't care less about that. But their TPB program would be amazing and all-encompassing. And their heart is probably closer to being in the right place overall with the property.
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Old 06-17-2025, 09:59 AM   #12
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Let's just hope IDW will last more than a year, TMNT Saturday Morning Adventures comic is also good
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Old 06-17-2025, 10:28 AM   #13
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Here's another article, basically they lost $750,000 when Diamond went bankrupt
Diamond was run so badly for so long, it only lasted as long as it did because they didn't have any competition. It was a house of cards that took a surprisingly long time to collapse. The upside of this situation is there is actual competition now, distributors who actually get books to their publishers on time. The free market will hopefully prevent publishers nearly collapsing when a distributor goes under in the future.
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Old 06-17-2025, 11:20 AM   #14
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It might be true that Marvel and DC are bigger comic publishers than any other company but in my opinion IDW is good comic publisher too because it has TMNT, Sonic and some other franchises even though they are mostly licensed to be published by IDW
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Old 06-17-2025, 11:22 AM   #15
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but in my opinion IDW is good comic publisher too because it has TMNT, Sonic and some other franchises
How in the world does just simply having certain licenses equate to quality?
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Old 06-17-2025, 11:27 AM   #16
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How in the world does just simply having certain licenses equate to quality?
In rest on my comment I acknowledged they mostly have licensed franchises but you might be right but still I enjoy TMNT comics published by IDW, I mean Mirage Comics are good too but TMNT comics published by IDW are also good

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Old 06-17-2025, 04:57 PM   #17
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Based on the very article that started this thread, relying so much on license work is a big part of how IDW got into this position. If you rely on licenses, not only do you have to provide a kickback to whoever owns that license (Nickelodeon in the case of TMNT) but if you lose the license you can no long reprint any of it and lose access not just to new sales but also whatever income is being made through trades and hardcover sales in bookstores and such. They had the Transformers license for nearly 20 years and fumbled it fairly badly. Now a huge part of IDW's back catalog isn't even something they can sell anymore.

Just having the licenses isn't good enough, you need good creators on those books with good ideas and a firm hand to provide creative direction and to know when to make changes.

When it comes to the Turtles I'm curious if they would even still have that license if it wasn't for the Last Ronin. The main series has been running for some time, but it sounds like outside of the 150 "relaunch" issue sales are not going well. Hopefully that turns around if for no other reason than I am really enjoying Saturday Morning Adventures and would have to see them lose this license as well and end up with that book cancelled.
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Old 06-17-2025, 05:03 PM   #18
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How in the world does just simply having certain licenses equate to quality?
Same reason DC is good by virtue of owning the exclusive rights to Batman.
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Turtles is basically the red-headed stepchild of Nick.
Hahahaha!
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Old 06-17-2025, 06:42 PM   #19
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I just want all of Mirage and Archie reprinted in books, is that too much to ask,
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Old 06-17-2025, 11:47 PM   #20
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Hmmm... well now I wonder if I'll see Alopex in the mainline comic again before IDW goes under... and given the level of character assassination she's already gotten... will I want to?
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