Suggestions for the Alien-IDW partnership
Word Balloons #1261: Publishing moves continue in tumultuous year for comic books
This has been a week of big comic book and related news, with the Diamond auction seemingly resulting in a purchase; the fallout and discussion of such purchase; the release of a huge mainstream comics hit in part 1 of DC Comics’ “Batman: H2SH,” and the announcements of all kinds of cast members for the next “Avengers” films. Amidst all the excitement is an announcement that I hope has some exciting news for a certain subset of fans.
IDW Comics & Entertainment, and Alien Books, current publishers of the Valiant Comics properties, have announced a strategic partnership.
IDW is the licensor and publisher of comics featuring Godzilla, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and more, in addition to a host of original properties.
"We are thrilled to be partnering with IDW Publishing to distribute our comics, graphic novels, and manga to the direct market and book stores," said Matias Timarchi, Alien Books Director and Editor-in-Chief, in a news release. "The team at IDW has been incredibly welcoming and this partnership allows us to continue to produce the best comics possible while enabling access to IDW's terrific sales and operation teams to better position the work of our creators. Alien has big things planned for the rest of 2025, including our upcoming 'Valiant Beyond' relaunch with our partners at Valiant Entertainment, as well as some new licensed properties that we'll be announcing soon. This deal is a huge win for Alien Books, IDW, Valiant, comic shops, and all of our readers and fans."
While everything else I’m going to say in this column is purely speculative, here are a few ideas that might be fun as Alien and IDW work together.
Turtles/Valiant crossover.
The Ninja Turtles could easily meet Ninjak and other Valiant Comics heroes in a crossover that could have happened back in the 1990s, but might be even more fun now.
Bring back Magnus and the Gold Key heroes
IDW’s experience in licensing could help here – bring back some of the classic heroes known for helping launch the 1990s Valiant Comics experience, like Magnus, Solar and Turok. This could lead to the following..
High-end reprint of “Unity.”
The “Unity” crossover is one of the best comics crossover series of the 1990s, and it’s not been collected in its entirety for decades, due to the rights situations over Magnus and Solar specifically. Getting the rights to do a high-end reprint could be right up IDW’s alley in conjunction with Alien.
The “Valiant Beyond” relaunch is still set to take place with accessible jumping-on points, including a new “The X-O Manowar” #1 from Alien. It will be interesting to see how IDW and Alien leverage their respective strengths to raise the profile of the Valiant line.
Matthew Price, matthew@matthewLprice.com, has written about the comics industry for more than two decades. He is the co-owner of Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman, Oklahoma.