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As the dust continues to settle on the massive and sudden wave of layoffs that struck IDW Media Holdings (and its subsidiaries IDW Publishing and IDW Entertainment) on April 27 – a slate of dismissals that saw approximately 39% of the company’s workforce let go over the course of a single day – the facts are still slowly becoming clear about what happened. Even as IDW issued a press release on May 3 (its first public statement since the upheaval a week earlier) announcing what the company had previously dubbed a “reset” for the publishing division under a new leadership of both new hires and remaining staff, many of those dismissed from the company are still struggling to make sense of the how and why of their abrupt termination.

Although IDW’s former employees are almost universally reticent to speak openly and on the record (lest their comments harm prospects with future employers), Popverse has been able to speak with several of the laid-off IDW employees across multiple divisions, who together helped assemble a fuller portrait of one of the more jarring single days in recent comic industry news.

At the same time, Popverse has been speaking to current IDW staff about the situation, including senior figures within the company including the newly-hired CEO Davidi Jonas (whose family owns a majority percentage of the company).

The writing was on the wall for IDW, possibly as early as 2021

According to one source at the company who was among management before the layoffs, the murmurings of bad news on the horizon began some time before the actual wave of layoffs, following the release of IDW’s latest financial report on March 15, 2023; a report which revealed a loss from IDW Publishing of $335,000 in its first fiscal quarter, which ended on January 31.

"And for at least a year and a half if not longer, it has been very, very much known that IDW Entertainment was going to make a shit-ton of money in 2022, and [IDW Entertainment is] not going to make any money in 2023. None of that is a surprise: they knew that at the end of 2021.”

“We knew something was up. We knew some changes were coming,” the former employee tells Popverse. “The entire Board changed over, Davidi Jonas had come in [to the Board of Directors] on March 30…it was very clear that that was going to happen. So none of this was a surprise. It was clear that Davidi and other people were here to bring some kind of change. And for at least a year and a half if not longer, it has been very, very much known that IDW Entertainment was going to make a shit-ton of money in 2022, and [IDW Entertainment is] not going to make any money in 2023. None of that is a surprise: they knew that at the end of 2021.”

IDW Entertainment is the company’s movie and television division, which develops movies and TV shows based on IDW comic books and other properties it owns the media rights to. One prominent example that underlines the “shit-ton of money” IDW Entertainment brought in was the $4.3 million it reported in the first quarter of 2022, received from Netflix for the completion of the live-action second season of Locke & Key. In the first quarter of 2023 however, IDW Entertainment reported “no meaningful revenue recognition.”

IDW on April 27: ‘Today is your last day at IDW’

Nevertheless, the precise timing of when, and to what extent, some tumult would occur at IDW remained a mystery until the first signs were given out at around 10:00 AM on Thursday April 27, when top-level leadership at IDW – including then-publisher Nachie Marsham – were privately informed that they were being let go from the company. This news was not made publicly available to other IDW staff at the time; nevertheless, rumors gradually and tentatively began to creep through to others at the company.

"I think he’s been laid off. He’s not on the Slack anymore."

“That Thursday, I woke up, and one of my colleagues had an early morning meeting with Nachie. And we knew that something was going on with corporate – at least from my level, I knew, and some of my peers knew, but I didn’t have that many details,” one former IDW employee describes to Popverse. “So before my colleague had his meeting with Nachie, we checked in with his assistants to make sure he’d still be able to make it. And he told us, ‘I think he’s been laid off. He’s not on the Slack anymore.’”

At this point, word began to spread via the IDW company Slack, as employees wondered what, if any, further moves would be made that day. The answer came soon in the form of mandatory meeting invitations that appeared on the calendars of all remaining staffers. Employees received invitations to one of two Zoom calls: the first taking place at 12:00 PM, the second an hour later at 1:00 PM.

“It was kind of bizarre that there were two separate meetings,” one employee recalls. “We generally had not had that sort of thing. So we were left to wonder what the hell was going on for about two hours, and all knowing, obviously, that Nachie was fired.”

When the 12:00 meeting did take place, it moved swiftly and bluntly. One employee recalled that almost immediately after the start of the meeting, attendees realized that their Slack and email accounts were both signed out at the same time.

“And that’s when I realized, ‘oh, shit, we’re all getting fired,’” a former IDW employee told us.

“The [12:00] meeting was extremely brief and was held via Zoom,” another staffer recalls. “Amber Huerta, the head of HR [since promoted to be IDW’s COO] informed us that Allan Grafman was no longer CEO and had been replaced by company owner Howard Jonas' son, Davidi Jonas. She also informed us that several people in senior management were being removed and replaced, including [publisher] Nachie Marsham. She then told us the company would be reducing staff by 39% and that everyone included in the meeting was part of that reduction. ‘Today is your last day at IDW.’”

The later meeting (at 1:00 PM) was held to fill in those still remaining on staff after the two waves of layoffs, which included Mark Doyle and Tara McCrillis (both promoted to be co-publishers), and Jamie S. Rich (now editor-in-chief), among others.

Multiple employees confirmed that among the cut employees – which CEO Davidi Jonas now confirms to be 32, four above the initial 28 reported -- were not only Marsham and Grafman, but also all but one member of the company’s sales and marketing team, as well as Julia Borden, who had been IDW Publishing’s sole foreign rights associate.

IDW Entertainment received the most drastic of layoffs, with the division going from seven employees down to two. IDW Entertainment's creative & business development director Daniela Diiorio remains with the division, as does Daniel Kendrick - who was promoted from senior director of kids, family, and animation to senior vice president of film & television. Four of their immediate co-workers were laid off, while one was shifted over to IDW Publishing, according to sources inside the company.

Several sources had heard rumors that IDW would need to pull out of their participation in ALA Annual and Comic-Con International: San Diego for the year, however Popverse has since been able to confirm that IDW currently remains scheduled for both events.

The thinking behind IDW’s layoffs

Just why IDW made these swift moves, and who was responsible for making them, has been a topic of shifting opinion among those let go from the company over the past weeks. During the meeting itself, employees were assured that the cuts were not being made due to performance issues on any of the removed employees’ individual parts.

In the first public interview by an IDW executive since the layoffs, newly-installed CEO Davidi Jonas told Heidi MacDonald at The Beat that he “spoke to a bunch of people I trust in editorial” to set a plan for restructuring and rethinking the makeup of the company, saying in that interview, “that was the way we built the company and decided who was going to be staying on and who we were going to bring on after we made these hard choices."

In that interview, Davidi Jonas described the previous iteration of IDW as “a siloed business” – referring, as he explained to Popverse, to both the distance between IDW’s Publishing and Entertainment divisions, as well as what he considered poor organization within IDW Publishing in its own right.

Jonas’ comments in that interview have caused many former employees to rethink their assumptions about the timeline of firings, as well as who may have been involved.

Several former IDW employees told us that a growing consensus is emerging among the dismissed staff that the layoffs were planned by Jonas, in consultation with Doyle and Rich. That, however, is refuted by Jonas, who tells Popverse that those two were explicitly not the “people in editorial” to whom Jonas spoke on arriving at IDW. Jonas also maintains that the consultations in question were about an ideal organizational structure for staffing a comic publisher, rather than a plan for any immediate changes at IDW.

One of the laid-off employees says that “people internally understand this was a coup,” since the layoffs included senior leadership such as the CEO, the CFO, four vice presidents, and the publisher.

One of the laid-off employees says that “people internally understand this was a coup,” since the layoffs included senior leadership such as the CEO, the CFO, four vice presidents, and the publisher.

“This was not just blind numbers on a page to cut some salary figure… this was all calculated. This was all very planned,” the employee tells Popverse. “[Davidi Jonas] went to editorial, and they helped him make this decision. People internally understand this was a coup. They rolled over on me; they rolled over on my direct reports. And as me and my colleagues look back over the past few months, things are starting to fall into place a little bit.”

Not every former employee agreed that Rich and Doyle were themselves involved in the decision-making. One source expressed the alternative view that the two were “probably complicit, in that I’d be surprised if somebody made these decisions without consulting them first.”

“I would imagine [corporate] would shore things up by making sure Jamie, Mark, and Tara were ride-or-die for the idea. I do not think it was the first time they had heard this stuff on Thursday morning.”

Given the apparent rapidity of IDW’s restaffing efforts – which included two confirmed hires (including a chief digital officer in Josh Frankel), and four major promotions – some think this “reset” was underway well before April 27.

“All the promotions came really fast: you don’t do that over a weekend.”

Popverse has been able to confirm that both Doyle and McCrillis, the company’s new co-publishers, were both present at the 12:00 PM staff Zoom call where people were told they were being let go. Through screenshots provided to us by multiple laid-off employees, Popverse can confirm Doyle had his camera turned off during the call.

New CEO Davidi Jonas comments on his decisions

For his own part, Davidi Jonas says that his decisions were driven most immediately by a pressing financial need. Speaking to Popverse, Jonas tells us that while the company’s fiscal report from Q1 to Q2 of the current year has not yet been released publicly, “Our company had a tremendous loss…the company went from having about $9.3 million to under $6 million in a quarter. Based on that run rate, the company was on a path to insolvency in a matter of two to three quarters. So one of the objectives was just to staunch the capital bleeding.”

“Our company had a tremendous loss…the company went from having about $9.3 million to under $6 million in a quarter."

As far as the timing and process of IDW’s decisions, Jonas did not comment directly on the individuals who may have advised him (or been involved with) the personnel moves and firings within the company. He acknowledged, however, that the decisions emanated from the Board of Directors, and began substantially earlier than the announcements on April 27: indeed, according to Jonas, the first conversations took place at the March 30 Board meeting on the same day that he was officially appointed to the Board of Directors.

“Certainly this was something that [the former] executive management within the company, prior to their departure, were having a conversation about with the Board,” Jonas tells Popverse. “Because as soon as we got involved, the first Board meeting was March 30. And following that first Board meeting, the Board basically said, ‘Look, it’s very clear that the company is on a crash course. And if we don’t change course very soon, we're concerned that this company is going to get to a point where there's no capital resources, and we're going to have to either declare bankruptcy, or get into a position where we're raising capital in such a dilutive fashion that it's almost an equivalent for our equity holders to going into bankruptcy and wiping out their equity.’

"So I’d say basically everyone at the upper level of leadership, including people who are no longer at the company, were part of that conversation.”

"Look, it’s very clear that the company is on a crash course."

“I had been myself preparing for the Board meeting, and already had a deeper sense of what the systemic issues were,” Jonas continues. “So I’d say maybe the conversation began at that point in time, and really picked up in maybe the second or third week in April, so everything happened rather quickly. And again, the reason for the rapidity is because, just on a monthly and weekly basis, the company was hemorrhaging capital and putting shareholders in a precarious position.”

When it comes to the sales and marketing team, which underwent the most drastic set of layoffs on April 27, Jonas says that he was driven by a desire to exploit markets and publicity channels that had not been sufficiently engaged by the existing team. In particular, he cites, “relationship-building with retailers in the independent comic market, as well as “a disconnect between where our fans are on social media on Instagram, on TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and the level of focus and capital allocation towards those channels.”

Jonas also reiterated his previous opinion about the “siloed” culture of IDW’s teams, explaining to Popverse that he envisions a process whereby marketing, sales, and licensing staff are more closely involved with the creative end of the books IDW produces. “I look at the creative process as being somewhat cradle-to-grave,” Jonas says. “So the creative team, let’s say in the editorial side, works really closely with our partners and licensors to create the best storytelling…I think that there was a disconnect between the engagement that the creative team was having, and the level of expectation for successful sales and marketing to be able to be able to look at our partners and say, ‘yes, we’re doing our very best to find the audience for this book, and create that authentic engagement.’”

While Jonas expressed confidence in the new leadership team he has put together (and said that there would be more hirings in days to come), he also acknowledged the reconstituted team would be smaller than the one that preceded it, which he described as “oversized.”

"... so I think the company is just oversized in a bunch of different ways."

“I think the company was out of alignment in terms of the level of staffing and the size of different groups,” Jonas says. “At a corporate level, when I was coming into the conversation – let’s say in the middle of March or the end of March – the corporate team was much bigger and more expensive. I don’t see the value in having a large corporate team. I think this should be a streamlined organization, and that I as the CEO need to be directly involved and engaged in the lines of business on Entertainment and Publishing…so I think the company is just oversized in a bunch of different ways.”

In talking with Popverse, Jonas brushed aside the notion, which some former employees have mentioned, that any decisions were made based on rivalries within the company.

“There were people within leadership, and who were going to be in future leadership, who were most involved in these considerations,” Jonas says. “But I couldn’t really say it was this one person or that one person, and I don’t think there was any personal animus or anything like that…I repeated many, many times to different groups within the company that this really has to be as much as possible an objective decision-making process, and people shouldn’t be trying to push this person out because there’s a personal situation, or protect this person because they have some sort of personal affiliation or relationship.”

IDW’s former employees search for reasons behind the “reset”

That said, even employees who see deeper motivations behind the moves acknowledge the financial realities that spurred changes at the company. A former senior-level employee agreed that the move was tied to the losses in IDW’s most recent financial reports, but stressed two factors that they felt were worth considering.

First, and perhaps more importantly, they noted that the company’s troubles were inherently tied to its historic dependence on licensed properties such as Transformers and G.I. Joe – properties which, as of 2022, began to shrink, with both Hasbro franchises departing the publisher. IDW retains other Hasbro licenses such as Dungeons & Dragons and My Little Pony.

While IDW’s financial report for the last quarter of 2022 had acknowledged an expected $1.2 million loss in revenue as a result of this, the employee we spoke to wondered if Davidi Jonas and IDW’s other owners nevertheless maintained unrealistic expectations, particularly considering that those losses had been reportedly mitigated by gains across the licensed properties that remained with the company.

"I think that they bought IDW because there was a perception purposely given from the founders of IDW that IDW was this goldmine of IP..."

“I don’t think [the owners] ever got what they wanted from the company,” the employee told us. “I think that they bought IDW because there was a perception purposely given from the founders of IDW that IDW was this goldmine of IP, that could be leveraged, in a world back in 2015 or whenever it was, when the world looked like that. I think they were saddened and disheartened to find out after they purchased the company that those things weren’t actually true, and that IDW – one of America’s strongest licensed comics publishers – didn’t actually have a gold mine of IP underneath it anywhere, because we don’t actually own anything. None of that should've been a surprise to anyone, it's clear just from looking at the books on the shelves.”

IDW once thought of itself as a “mini-Marvel”

The other side of that model, according to the employee we spoke to, is a dependable stability to IDW’s profits from licensed materials, which lacked the volatility of less tested original properties in the marketplace: “IDW Publishing is fairly static. This is not a sexy business. We are not here to be explosive. We are not here to all of a sudden, magically, show double-digit growth year over year.”

“One of the CEO’s we’ve had was very fond of being like, ‘we’re going to be a mini-Marvel,’” the employee continues. “And I think there was a perception in corporate that a kind of house-flipping aesthetic was going to be part of things: that they bought the company, and then they’ll make sure the price is inflated, and sell it for profit, and then they’ll move on to the next thing. Because the purpose of that company is to be a telecommunications company, and also to fuel the energy company investments and whatnot.”

Strictly speaking, while it is true that a majority stake in IDW was initially purchased by Howard Jonas’s IDT Corporation in 2007, the media company was subsequently spun off into its own, independently-traded company in 2009. Nevertheless, the Jonases – both Howard and his son Davidi – possess long histories with both companies, as well as with Howard’s other corporate venture Genie Energy.

IDW and the promise of movies & TV shows based on creator-owned comics

One opportunity where IDW did envision mining income from its own properties was through media options on creator-owned series. Like many smaller publishers over the past decades, including BOOM! Studios, Skybound Entertainment, Vault Comics, AfterShock Comics, and others, IDW retains some or all of the media rights for the series they publish, allowing them to generate substantial profits even from series for which they do not possess the copyright. This was the case for the current ownership’s most successful adapted property to date, Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez’s Locke and Key, which ran for three seasons on Netflix.

Such a model, however, poses a risk to creators in the event that the publisher in question enters bankruptcy proceedings, turning media rights into bankruptcy assets – as, indeed, recently became the case for those creators tied to AfterShock Comics when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2022.

As a former senior employee at the company tells us, “Where it does work for you in terms of a profitability standpoint definitely comes from [getting] some money when someone actually says they are going to make this [adaptation], and then you get some sort of percentage when it’s actually on air as well. And not being able to execute against that [due to uncertainty about the company] is weird.”

"I think the restructuring of entertainment should suggest a more integrated relationship between Publishing and Entertainment."

For their own part, the current IDW staff asserts that media adaptations are by no means the primary focus of IDW’s plans. Speaking to Popverse on condition of anonymity, one IDW employee told us, “I think the restructuring of entertainment should suggest a more integrated relationship between Publishing and Entertainment. While we still are going to look at partnering on entertainment, everything starts with publishing great comics and graphic novels that can succeed in their own right and are not backing off creator-driven IP.”

What IDW creators are thinking after the news of layoffs and a “reset”

Indeed, that mood of uncertainty is echoed by some creators who are warily eyeing the fate of their comics in light of the past weeks’ news.

Steve Horton is the writer behind the IDW series Satellite Falling, which, at the time of the turnover at IDW, had already entered into the early process of staffing and scripting a television adaptation. Reached for comment shortly after the layoffs at IDW, Horton had initially expressed concern about the fate of his series given IDW’s staffing changes, recalling the difficulties faced by other creators at companies in financial distress.

“Myself and artist Stephen Thompson just signed a publishing rights extension a few months ago, and IDW already owns media rights in perpetuity,” Horton tells Popverse. “In the event of a bankruptcy, Satellite Falling would become a bankruptcy asset. Being at the bottom of the food chain, the odds of getting the publishing or media rights back are next to none.”

Since that time, however, Horton informs us that he has heard from Daniel Kendrick at IDW, who assured Horton and his colleagues that “everything was going fine with [Satellite Falling], and that he’d keep me updated.”

"It's hard to make money publishing comics, and even harder when the billionaire owners expect massive growth and results and games and TV shows and movies and none of those things materialize."

Nevertheless, in his initial conversations with Popverse, Horton expressed bewilderment over the general environment for creators in an unstable comics industry. “It's hard to make money publishing comics, and even harder when the billionaire owners expect massive growth and results and games and TV shows and movies and none of those things materialize,” Horton says. “The comics industry, especially on the creator-owned side of things, is going through a tectonic shift right now toward the do-it-yourself model through crowdfunding. With nearly no venues left for adult-oriented, direct market creator-owned comics, going it alone may soon be the only option.”

Are comic publisher problems like this souring Hollywood’s interest in comics adaptations?

One former IDW employee we spoke to is inclined to agree, noting that the mounting frequency of these events sows distrust even among the companies on which the publisher’s profits depend.

“I remember when I came in [to IDW], I talked to Paramount, and Hasbro, and Sega, and they were kind of like, ‘All right, I mean, y’all are weird, but you guys do make the comic books well. So I guess it’s okay, but man, it sure would be nice if you guys weren’t a goddamn disaster all the time.’”

The end of the end for 32 now-former IDW employees

During his conversation with Popverse, Jonas expressed sympathy for the employees whose jobs were lost as a result of his and IDW’s decisions. “Most of the employees who were let go, I never had the good fortune of getting to meet in person and develop a personal relationship,” Jonas says. “I can tell you, I lost sleep. I lost appetite. It’s a completely shitty feeling to be in a position to make a choice about people’s livelihoods, you know? People have told me about employees who moved across the country – I wasn’t aware of those facts. But it’s awful.”

Nevertheless, Jonas is confident that his decision was the right one, telling Popverse, “If we wouldn’t have made the hard choices, the company would have had the ability to employ 82 people for another nine months. And that would have been terribly tragic, because that would mean that an entire company would potentially lose its ability to provide for themselves and their families, and have fun at work. And making the hard choice that we made, I think that we’re going to continue to have the ability to employ – whether it’s 50, 45, 55, whatever that magic number is at any given point in time. It can grow or diminish depending on cyclical business operation, but I’m confident we have right around the right number of staff. I think we have the ability to have a company that’s going to be successful for decades to come.”

To those without jobs in the wake of the layoffs, Jonas says, “I’m sorry. I feel badly. And I hope they don’t begrudge me, but I understand if they do. I don’t know that all the right decisions were made. And if they feel we made mistakes in certain choices, they might very well be right. I have no way of knowing.”

"I’m sorry. I feel badly. And I hope they don’t begrudge me, but I understand if they do."

For those who lost their jobs and found their careers set back by these IDW layoffs, however, things are far less certain, and the future remains in doubt. By the end of the week following the terminations, the employees we spoke to had begun receiving severance information from IDW, which some sources described to us as “paltry” and “not up to industry standards.”

Said another former staffer, “For a company where most people haven’t actually been there that long to come in and be like, ‘Okay, you’ve been here for two years. Here’s two weeks’ pay. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.’ – It’s not a conversation that I think most people are going to want.”

Multiple employees also mentioned that the agreements contained anti-disparagement clauses – one reason why those to whom we spoke would only do so under condition of anonymity.

While Popverse was unable to learn all of the details of what severance packages entailed, multiple former employees confirmed for us that they were paid a total of one week’s salary per year they had worked at the company.

For at least one former high-level employee, however, the package was considerably more generous. According to a separation agreement dated May 10, 2023 (and publicly released by IDW on May 15), former IDW CEO Allan Grafman was paid $300,000 along with an option on 26,399 shares of Class B common stock on being dismissed from IDW, although the documents noted that these terms do “not purport to be complete.”

For now, those affected by the mass layoffs can only wait, watch, and hope for the best. In the meantime, even commiserating with one another has become an unexpected challenge. When Popverse inquired with one employee about an email address for a former colleague, they replied that they were surprised to realize they didn’t have one: all of the IDW addresses in their address book had been closed down.

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This story is part of Popverse's initiative into original reporting into the comics and pop culture industry, supported by those that become paid Popverse members.