It’s Alive Leaves IDW Next Year, Previews Family Man

Drew Ford launched It’s Alive in 2016 as a publishing imprint dedicated to reprinting comics by classic creators. (Previously, he did something similar for Dover Publications.) It was Kickstarter-funded with later distribution handled by IDW.

Titles have included Red Range by Joe R. Lansdale and Sam Glanzman, Trina Robbins’ adaptation of Sax Rohmer’s Dope, and The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee and Trina Robbins.

It’s Alive is going to leave IDW next year “to become an independent publishing operation”. Ford said

“I am leaving on good terms. [What we’re doing], it’s just simply not a good fit for what they are doing. I’m grateful to IDW and to [former IDW CEO] Ted Adams for greenlighting this project.”

As specialty books, these projects may not have much interest to the general audience. Ford does a good job getting out the word for the Kickstarters, and those may exhaust the primary market for these old-school works. Adams is no longer with the company, which may also be a factor.

It’s Alive will release its next two books through IDW to conclude the agreement. These are Voyage to the Deep by Sam Glanzman and Family Man by Jerome Charyn and Joe Staton.

Family Man is now available for order through Diamond Previews. It was originally published by DC’s Paradox Press in 1995 in three black-and-white installments. This is the first time it will appear as one volume, in a larger size, as a hardcover, and colored via Craft Tint.

It tells the story of two brothers: one, a man of God; the other, a man of the Mob. And in a city on the edge of chaos, they’ll do anything to survive…. Someone is killing the mob chieftains one by one, and the last survivors call on Alonzo, the Family Man, to hunt down the murderer. But it won’t be easy — not when Alonzo’s own brother Charles, the gun-toting Monsignor of the corruption-ridden New York City police department, is a prime suspect.

The publisher provided this selection of preview pages.