IDW Original Group Editor Maggie Howell Jumps to Ignition Press

Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, IDW | Tagged: Ignition Press, maggie howell

IDW Original Group Editor Maggie Howell jumps to Ignition Press before Christmas

Ignition Press, the new publisher co-founded by publisher Filip Sablik, editor-in-chief Jamie S. Rich, creative director Jeremy Haun, and producer Eric Gitter, continues to make industry waves which naturally Bleeding Cool continues to scoop. The last bit of news we had came out of NYCC where Ignition had a packed schedule of meetings with creators, distributors, retailers, and other industry insiders and threw an invite-only party at celebrity chef José Andrés and Albert and Ferran Adrià‘s Leña at the nearby Hudson Yards.

Now I’m hearing that the upstart publisher has recruited IDW Group Editor of Original Content, Maggie Howell, who will be officially joining the team at the beginning of the new year. Bleeding Cool first scooped Howell’s departure from DC Black Label three years ago. Although apparently, we overlooked her promotion from Senior Editor to Group Editor a year and a half ago.

During her five years at DC, Howell had quite the run developing and launching multiple titles and imprints spearheaded by former IDW Publisher Mark Doyle and former IDW editor-in-chief Rich, including The Sandman Universe and Joe Hill‘s Hill House Comics alongside critically acclaimed and award-winning series including Tom King and Mitch Gerads‘ Mister Miracle, Far Sector by N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell, Si Spurrier and Aaron Campbell‘s John Constantine Hellblazer, Batman: One Dark Knight by Jock, and Sean Murphy‘s Batman: White Knight universe.

Howell had a similarly impressive impact during her three years at IDW. Despite the publisher’s ongoing internal turbulence and missteps, Howell spearheaded original series that netted the publisher multiple Eisner Awards this year including G. Willow Wilson and Chris Wildgoose‘s The Hunger and the Dusk, Stephen Graham Jones‘ and Davide Gianfelice‘s Earthdivers, and Patrick Horvath‘s Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees, which became IDW’s best-selling original series of the last decade. More recently, she launched IDW’s new horror imprint IDW Dark, which will include the sequel to Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees alongside new iconic horror licenses. She also headed up the publisher’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles relaunch alongside then-editor-in-chief Rich to historic sales and acclaim, as well as overseeing IDW’s Godzilla line which will reboot this coming summer.

All this to say, Howell is another impressive addition to Ignition Press’s already talent and experience-rich team ahead of any actual publishing plans being revealed (although not entirely surprising given her shared history with Jamie S Rich). As I understand it, Howell is joining the team to take on the numerous series the publisher has already greenlit and contracted from a wide variety of creators. What that list of creators and projects are, no one is saying. One does wonder which of Howell’s favourite creators will join the Ignition line up in the coming months as well…

In the meantime, Bleeding Cool will continue to keep our ears to the ground and see if we can keep our scoop streak up as we head toward February’s ComicsPRO Industry Meeting, which Ignition Press has already been confirmed as a sponsoring publisher of.

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