Posted in: Comics | Tagged: disney, idw

Disney Gives IDW an Award for Comics

Published Wed, 13 Jun 2018 16:40:16 -0500

Disney has awarded IDW its Best New Licensee award, for the various Disney comics IDW has published in the last year including the all-ages Star Wars Adventures. IDW boasted of the honor in a press release:

IDW Publishing, a division of IDW Media Holdings, is proud to announce that Disney Publishing Worldwide honored them with their prestigious Best New Licensee Award at the Bologna Children's Book Fair 2018.

The Best New Licensee Award is given to a new Disney Publishing Worldwide licensee signed in the past year, who created a new format and brought new distribution into the marketplace. In 2017, IDW began publishing an all-ages Star Wars comic, Star Wars Adventures, in addition to their Disney titles. Star Wars Adventures launched as a fan favorite in September 2017, and quickly gained notice by the industry; Diamond Comic Distributors acknowledged the title's sales achievement with two GEM Award nominations in the categories of Best New Comic Book Series and Licensed Comic of the Year.

And Disney Publishing Worldwide Vice President Daniel Saeva praised the publisher:

IDW's highly-successful Star Wars comics provided a new entry point for early readers into the Star Wars universe. We are excited to see the stories that they will introduce to the new generation of Star Wars fans in the coming year.

The press release also talked up IDW's Disney comics published since 2015, which doesn't really make sense when the award is supposed to be for licensees signed in the past year, but Disney must take the same view of time limits as they do copyright extensions.

IDW's line of Disney comic books and graphic novels launched in 2015 with the continuation of such long-standing series as Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Uncle Scrooge, and has since expanded to include DuckTales, Tangled: The Series, Big Hero 6: The Series, Star Wars Adventures, and more. Additional Disney publishing programs from IDW include their line of Artist's Editions – high-end reproductions of original art by Disney animation legend Don Rosa – as well as hardcover collections of the Donald Duck and Silly Symphonies newspaper comic strips.

Jeff Webber, Head of Rights Management at IDW Publishing, was on-hand at the sandwich-themed Bologna Children's Book Fair, which is hosted by Oscar Mayer, to accept the award. Congratulations to IDW on the honor. Though it does raise a question…