Visions of 2011: Infestation

As we’re getting set to wrap 2010 at the IDW offices, there’s been lots of the usual “what was the best this-and-that of the year” talk, questions about IDW’s highlights, all of that. And it gets hard to specify any particular moments or titles, since there are so many. I mean, I’m proud of everything we put out, and happy that we’ve gotten the attention for many of our books that I think they warrant. But getting into particulars is always tricky. So instead, the highlight that stands out for me above and beyond the great crop of titles and talented creators we work with, is IDW finally becoming a Premiere publisher with Diamond this year. That was something we worked at very hard, for years, and it was great to see it finally happen. I’m headed toward my 7th full year as Editor-in-Chief here, which is over half of IDW’s existence, and it’s nice to have that as a concrete accomplishment to point to.

Another thing I’m happy about, and excited to foist on everyone next month, is INFESTATION, the first-ever “event” we’ve done at IDW. I’m very interested to see how it’s received, as I think we’ve taken a lot of disparate elements (Zombies vs Robots, CVO, plus four licensed properties like Star Trek, Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Ghostbusters) and weaved them into an easily accessible storyline that works nicely without going for the full crossover, which just would have required a level of story contrivances I didn’t want to see, never mind any licensor challenges.

INFESTATION #1 hits next month, and then leads into February’s two licensed tie-ins (TRANSFORMERS and STAR TREK) and onward from there. Since these haven’t been shown anywhere else yet, it seems good to end the year with various glimpses of what’s coming in this event. Up first are a few pages from the Abnett-and-Lanning-scripted issue, with art by David Messina (and at the bottom, a flashback sequence from the issue by artist Elena Casagrande featuring cameos from me, Editor Tom Waltz, and STAR TREK: INFESTATION writer Scott Tipton, and Messina):