IDW Publishing just celebrated its 20th year in San Diego and is known for such comics as "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," "My Little Pony," "V Wars," and "Locke and Key," which debuts as a streaming series on Netflix this Friday.
You can learn a lot about a person by just looking at his office. When you walk into Chris Ryall's office at IDW Publishing in Liberty Station you immediately notice a row of helmets, a Jack Nicholson Joker death mask, and toys squeezed into every nook and cranny of every bookcases. There's also an old school comic book spinning display rack packed to its bursting point with well-used and obviously loved vintage comics from "Fantastic Four" and "X-Men" to "The Mighty Thor" and "Mystery Incorporated." We may be in the 21st Century where comics can be made and delivered by all digital means but there's nothing that beats the smell and feel of those fading comic book pages.
"We always talk about 'can we replicate that?' Can we get the newsprint back and the dot pattern coloring," Ryall said as he thumbed through a favorite issue of "Fantastic Four." Then he added, "But I don't think people really want that anymore. But there is something that's just so thoroughly nostalgic that just brings you right back to your childhood."
Part of what makes Ryall such a great publisher is that he truly loves comics and the joy that comics gave him as a kid has never gone away no matter how much the pressures and demands of wearing multiple hats at IDW place on him. The most recent mix of joy and stress comes from the arrival this Friday of the IDW comic "Locke and Key," by writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez, as a streaming series on Netflix.
"Amidst all the stress and everything else, this is maybe the best job there is," Ryall said. "It's funny, I did a re-read of the entire 'Locke and Key' comic series to get ready for the show again. And I hadn't read it as a reader. Before I was the editor, so I was living page by page with it, working with the guys on developing the book. But I haven't ever gone back and just read it as a reader and this is so good. We really make some good, compelling books. So you look around this office and this is kind of like my own head. You're living inside my brain right now. It's a constant thrill, comics have been a thing for my entire life and I'm still really excited to be able to contribute to this industry that I love so much."
The idea of a head cluttered with all sorts of things, ideas, memories, ephemera is something that comes into play in "Locke and Key."
IDW describes the comic as "a sprawling tale of magic and family, legacy and grief, good and evil. Acclaimed suspense novelist and New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill has created a gripping story of dark fantasy and wonder — with astounding artwork from Gabriel Rodriguez — that, like the doors of Keyhouse, will transform all who open it."
Bringing that unique fantasy world to life has taken years as the project has moved through different creative hands. But it has finally all come together with Netflix.
"It was originally going to be a Fox TV show and then it was going to be Hulu show," Ryall recalled. "I feel like all of those things have led us to where we are now, which is this Netflix show, which just feels like the perfect version of the show for a streaming world. So I'm so excited that we're finally here and to have everybody that worked so hard on this stuff, largely independently in their rooms as they're drawing pages or writing pages, to be able to see this thing finally come to life after a couple near misses is really exciting."
IDW Publishing has gone through some changes recently with co-founder and longtime CEO Ted Adams stepping down in the summer of 2018 to take a sabbatical. Ryall had left IDW briefly but returned in the winter of 2018 to take on the roles of president, publisher and chief creative officer.
"And since then, we've just been sort of figuring out who we are as the company starts its third decade," Ryall said. "So we've just been really trying to best position ourselves to go forward for what the company wants to be now in 2020 and beyond."
One of the exciting things on the horizon is a partnership with the Smithsonian.
"A few years ago, primarily coming out of the Congressman John Lewis books 'March,' we saw that there was a real appetite for nonfiction, graphic novels, too," Ryall said. "And so we followed that up with the George Takei's book last year, 'They Called Us Enemy,' and one of the things we talked about was sort of next iteration of IDW is, what do we want to be now? And we thought, well, we want to be more in that space of doing stories that have topical relevancy and historical relevancy, and telling these important stories that captivate a different kind of reader."
"So we started this conversation with the Smithsonian and they have so many, not only just the different museums but also the experts on-site that really know their area of expertise more than anybody else," Ryall said. "And so to engage them in ways to pull stories out of out of these museums or out of these exhibits and tell graphic novel stories, whether it's nonfiction or is fictionalized versions of past events that kind of thing is just a way to put graphic novels in front of people in different ways."
IDW began as just a comic book publisher here in San Diego two decades ago. Now it has an entertainment division, creates board games, publishes gorgeous coffee table comic art books, is working on Spanish language graphic novels for a North American audience, and is still hungry to find new ways to reach and expand its audience.
