We’ve heard today of two departures from IDW Publishing, including IDW’s Editor in Chief, Chris Ryall. Chris Ryall’s “Chrischarger” avatar was a familiar sight in the earliest IDW Transformers comics, which Ryall oversaw from the inception of Transformers at IDW.
In his farewell message to IDW staff, Ryall reflects on his 14 years with the publisher. He’s parting on good terms to seek new challenges and new opportunities – a fairly standard kind of career progression move that many of us would go for after spending a great deal of time with an employer.
Be sure to check out the full farewell message on Comicsbeat.
That is not all, though, as Steven Scott, IDW’s PR officer, has also announced that he is leaving IDW, effective Friday, according to a separate posting on Comicsbeat.
We wish both Chris and Steven all the best in their future endeavors.
moreprimeland
I freakin' give up… 2 more infractions, so this thread has zero hope of ever being a civil discussion thread.
optimusmegas
even if he's not one of "those types" i think what he said is an easy way to come away looking like the victim and to brush away all fault of his own. blame bigots..blame the alt right…blame trump…and then whatever you did is washed away because you're a "victim of hate" whether that was the circumstances or not. it's a disgusting practice but we live in a victim culture right now and that's the way it works. so many people who've done horrible things or legitimately made damaging mistakes to whatever business they're in pull the card sitterson and ryall pulled and they try to come off like martyrs and morons on sites like bleeding cool fall right in line.
shamanking282
What kind of agenda?
Scurv
I saw that tweet, pretty much confirmed he was doing what "those" types allways do. Infiltrate a fandom, push a particular agenda even if it doesn't belong and kills/hurts the host business or fandom.
Same shit, different day.
optimusmegas
he's got that big tumblr following that likes the 'feels' and cutesy shit he does. they like the 'shipping' more than the stories and they eat up his pop culture crap so they follow him like he's preaching the gospel.
and i dont' hate the guy. my biggest issue with LL is that i know roberts could be better…like season 1 better and i want it to be as great as it was at the start but the OC overload and exposition issues and pop culture nonsense and filler issures all combined with too many lack luster resolutions in a row are really souring me to this run.
i feel we're getting off topic though and i don't wanna derail things much further.
i think we can all agree issues we have with ryall and IDW are not as simple as "we're just all alt right bigots that hate the girls and the trannies" or whatever excuse ryall is going to use on us next
GoLion
It was only in TAAO that I finally came around on windblade. She finally felt like a full fledged character in the mini. I didn't like Drift until MTMTE either.
There is a weird sycophancy people have for him (Roberts) that I find disturbing. Don't get me wrong, I like his work, but I'm going to say/write something is bad when it's bad.
optimusmegas
i can see that…i think windblade had a hell of a turn around as a character in TAAO. i've liked her from the start though so maybe i'm bias but i think her character got better in time. same with drift. he's better now than the bland fan fic character he was from the start despite mccarthy trying to regress him in empire of stone.
i think roberts tried to push anode too hard and didn't take into account the fan reaction of her..yea some people like her…some people like everything that man does. but i see many that dont' like her for all the same reasons. i feel she had potential. like i said she could've been a tf lara croft but she's a douchebag. she's too much of an asshole to be liked.
my personal opinion is roberts does waaaaay too many OC characters and he pushes them front and center when they're either all bland or all too similar to really stand out how he wants them.
GoLion
Yea, I saw it. Who knows if it's the truth, it could very well be a fabrication. That said, we can confirm SOME of what was written ended up being true. Ryall himself admitted to it. He staked his job to protect Sitterson. Ryall bent over backwards to try to save him. Then he quits only months after his bid to save sitterson? Smoke and fire.
GoLion
It's heartbreaking how terrible she is. When she was initially introduced she was somewhat interesting, but as time went on it became obvious that she was such a bland and uninteresting character that she became a huge turnoff. At least with Windblade (another character I hated) there was some interesting visual characteristics. Hell, Drift and Windblade were the same character when initially introduced and both were rightfully criticized. It's just that the people that disliked Windblade were called sexists.
That paragraph was all over the place.
But yeah, Anode is terrible.
optimusmegas
yea that's pretty much what i see as well….she's not unique in her personality she comes off very douchey and lug suffers from lack of character by being just "anode's cojunx" and nothing else.
she's not likable and that's the problem we all seem to have. i mean…by occupation she's a transformer lara croft…she SHOULD be awesome but her characterization is awful.
WilyMech
Anode problem she can rub the people the wrong way not because she is tran it is because as a character she sucks the oxygen out of the room. Anode is very annoying at times as a character she is yet find her tempo.
I saw Sitterson tweets the author can be said the fans are homophobic. I get the feeling there was more to Sitterson firing than what's being said. Ryall sounds particularly bitter about leaving IDW so leads to believe there is a bit more going on. However other than the bitterness from Sitterson and Ryall we probably never find out the real reason of let go. IDW has to care about social issues because readers care about it. I would have to guess Sitterson had GI Joes become alt right nationalists that promoted xenophobia. It would have to be something against Hasbro and core principles of GI Joe that the author went against. Not because Sitterson tweets about some comments that offend comic community. I can only speculate what that was.
dragon_lord
I'd say is recent, but you could see some disagreement in fandom with the way James Roberts was writing MTMTE back in 2012, but it was mostly minor complains.
Tracer
Were IDW comics this divisive in the past 5 to 10 years or is this just something recent? Over the last year or so?
optimusmegas
I feel at this point its the easy trendy way to just shut down a conversation and equate it as a clear win. I mean how am I in the wrong when everyone against me are the alt right or bigots? Espeically with how the definitions are so skewed these days. It takes nothing to be labeled as something horrible based on a simple disagreement.
Its an easy way to say you're the victim and come out looking like a good guy when the reality is you're just as repugnant.
dragon_lord
Apparently what he said was based on a post in 4chan's /co/ regarding this situation
GoLion
And the thought process that leads people to think like that is VERY disturbing. Nuance is dying.
I think anyone who thinks like that is troubled.
Someone asking a question about something happening within the fiction is not automatically a bigot. I mean, why apply malice when stupidity will do?
optimusmegas
Yea of course there's always those fans out there but as you said its a minority of them. Take anode for example….all the hate going her way and the one thing that never is brought up is that she's trans.
Sitterson did the same thing. He said the only reason gi joe fans hated him is because they're alt right bigots.
That kind of attitude is rubbing people the wrong way and making anyone using those claims lose credibility. They really need to spot using "bigotry" as the only reason for criticism especially when it's clearly not the case. I mean the only time ive ever seen bigotry on this site related to mtmte it was by only one user and im 99% sure he was trolling. If anything this fanbase has been accepting to the point of demanding more of female characters and the only issue we all seemed to agree on about arcee was how it was handled….not that she was trans. Some bigots we turned out to be huh?
GoLion
And see, that's a part of the problem. His actions give credence to some of the rumors/conspiracy theories. He's creating the smoke that is feeding the fire that are these rumors.
I don't know whether these rumors are true or not, but he is NOT helping his case. Enough stuff is lining up that the the rumors seem likely – even if said rumors aren't true.
And count me among the group of people that find it REALLY disturbing that Ryall's knee-jerk reaction is to go down the road of calling people -ists because they are having legit complaints about the current product. He comes across as mean-spirited with those comments. He's arguing against a boogeyman strawman and not actually addressing the issues people ARE having with the comics.
Now, to be fair, is there a segment of fans that are being disgusting? ABSOLUTELY. I'd argue they're the minority, though. Most of the people are disturbed with people at IDW and their comments on social media. I think if Sitterson had just been fired RIGHT AWAY none of this shitstorm would be happening right now.
And IDW really, REALLY needs to move away from the idea that people who don't like the current crop of comics are somehow bigoted. Using the infinitesimal minority to try to imply the majority of people currently deriding IDW are bigots is disastrous and WILL drive people away. It's driven me away from IDW to a large extent.
Oh, and @ChrisMcfeely, No one is implying the rumors are true. People are just pointing out that there are a LOT of coincidences, and that maybe these rumors COULD be true.
Chris McFeely
Michael Payton's been making up "Hasbro isn't happy with IDW" stories with "my uncle works at Nintendo"-style claims of sources in Bleeding Cool comment threads since at least last year, so I'd label this 4chan conspiracy theory bullshit and move on.
optimusmegas
Im willing to believe he was forced out at this point based on a tweet he recently made about pissing off homophobic transphobic and whatever else phobic transformer fans…which I wasn't aware was even the problem in the first place.
Usually the people that are quick to fire off rhetoric like that are virtue signalling to cover up thier mistakes (sitterson did the same thing)