New IDW publisher placed on administrative leave after 5 days on the job

IDW Publishing has placed its publisher Jud Meyers on administrative leave, five days after his promotion to the position was announced.

"IDW Publishing has decided to put Jud Meyers on administrative leave," IDW's chief executive officer Ezra Rosensaft told The Hollywood Reporter on Monday. "President Jerry Bennington will assume his responsibilities as interim publisher at this time."

Jud Meyers' appointment to publisher was among a wave of promotions at IDW following the departure of long-time chief creative officer/publisher/president Chris Ryall.

"To say that the shoes we'll be stepping into will be hard to fill is the mother of all understatement," Meyers tweeted on July 22 after the promotions were announced.

In the press release announcing his promotion, IDW described the publisher position as overseeing "all aspects of production and publication" of IDW's comics.

Meyers joined IDW in August 2019 as global sales director, following a short stint in a similar position at Humanoids.

Prior to that, Meyers had a long track record as a comics retailer, working for Forbidden Planet in London, consulting in Virgin Megastore UK's first comic store, managing (and co-owning) Earth-2 Comics in Los Angeles, and later co-founding an L.A. comic store named Blastoff Comics.

Jerry Bennington, who was promoted to president last week at the same time Meyers was promoted, has been named acting publisher.

For the past eight years, he had been IDW's vice president of new product development. Prior to his start at IDW in 2012, Bennington worked in the specialty merchandise market for companies including the Upper Deck Company, Krome FX, and 3 Point Entertainment.

Chris Arrant covered comic book news for Newsarama from 2003 to 2022 (and as editor/senior editor from 2015 to 2022) and has also written for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Cartoon Brew, Bleeding Cool, Comic Shop News, and CBR. He is the author of the book Modern: Masters Cliff Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Man Classic, and contributed to Dark Horse/Bedside Press' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a member of the American Library Association's Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table. (He/him)