The Four Color Media Monitor

IDW's sales are still plummeting, as this ICV2 report states, although there seems to be some awkward bias in the article, as they must be trying to downplay the seriousness:

IDW Media Holding’s publishing division posted another big loss in its fiscal third quarter ended July 31, helping to pull over-all results for the company negative in another down quarter. The publishing division showed a loss of $801,000 in the quarter, an improvement from the $1.1 million loss in the same quarter a year ago, according to the company’s quarterly report. This continues a string of bad quarters for the division (see "IDW Publishing Sales Continue Declines").

"An improvement"? I'm sorry, but that's putting it lightly. An $800,000-plus loss is still pretty close to what they'd lost before, and it's unlikely they'll recover. It doesn't look like Marvel's licensing deal for all-ages titles is availing either. If nobody's buying, the arrangement was pointless.

The publishing division did post a sales increase, the first in some time, with sales growing $175,000 from $5.42 million a year ago to $5.60 million this year. Breaking down the publishing division’s sales increase, games were up $166,000, while comic and graphic novel publishing was down $173,000, with changes in digital (down) and licensing (up) revenues due to timing issues making up the rest of the difference in sales. The decline in comics and graphic novel publishing continues to be attributed to “industry cyclical downward pressure driven by market leaders,” along with “timing of significant major brand titles.”

I don't know what their game division's offerings are like, but it's clear they didn't handle their comics well, and let's remember a lot of their offerings were based on licensed merchandise like GI Joe and Transformers, the latter which may have ceased publication at their company this month. And last year proved to be a very hard hitter as they were rocked with the Aubrey Sitterson scandal. So what does ICV2 mean by a sales increase, when it's only their games division that might've worked out? The comics certainly haven't.

Speaking of Sitterson, he hasn't changed, if the following says anything:

After ComicsGate targeted me, I had my book buried & canceled and couldn't get interest from any other publishers. It really did a number on me for a long time.

But now I have my biggest project yet, The Comic Book Story of Professional Wrestling, coming out in a few weeks! https://t.co/yHaaubq0LD

— aubrey sitterson (@aubreysitterson) September 13, 2018

He still won't take accountability for alienating GI Joe fans, including army veterans, with his offensive comments about 9-11, and still wants to blame Comicsgate instead of his own conduct. (I'm sure he won't admit the SJW tactics he put into his catastrophous scripts that were published also sank the Joe series he wrote, but that's another story.) For all we know, he may have singlehandedly cost IDW much of their sales, but he still won't apologize, so he can't be surprised if nobody cares about his new wrestling history project.

It's too bad this all had to happen, of course, because, as I may have once noted, I did think there were some decent products they'd put out, but now, it looks like that's all changed in a fortnight, and the sudden swerve towards injecting SJW tactics in books like Jem & the Holograms also had a devastating effect on their receipts. So, if they're bound to go under soon, it's probably for the best. We have only to hope future companies that may deal in adapting licensed merchandise will learn from their mistakes, including the companies in charge of the licensing themselves.

Labels: indie publishers, licensed products, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, sales