IDW Publishing president, publisher, and chief creative officer Chris Ryall is stepping down from his current positions to join the World of Syzygy, a new storytelling venture launched in partnership with artist Ashley Wood that is based on content and characters Ryall developed at IDW Publishing. Wood has worked with IDW and Ryall on a variety of projects.
Although very little information about the World of Syzygy has been released, the venture was originally announced by Ryall and Wood in 2018. Wood is an award-winning comics artist that has worked on numerous comics projects for IDW. According to the WoS website, the venture is a partnership between Ryall and Wood and will focus on comics publishing and building an “all-new art-&-publishing collective.”
In a prepared statement Ryall said: “I look forward to bringing exciting new stories into the world through many different storytelling forms. I’m thrilled to be back working alongside Ashley Wood, as well as other creators to come, in developing interesting projects for our World of Syzygy venture."
Although Ryall is leaving his current leadership positions at IDW, he will continue to work as an executive producer of Locke & Key, a popular Netflix TV series based on graphic novels written by Joe Hill and drawn by Gabriel Rodriquez. Ryall will also continue as the sole editor of Locke & Key publishing efforts.
A comics writer as well as an editor and TV/film producer, Ryall joined IDW in 2004 as editor-in-chief and rose to publisher before leaving the comics publishing house in early 2018 to join Robert Kirkman’s Skybound imprint at Image Comics. Following an executive shakeup at IDW that saw a number of executives leave the company that same year, Ryall returned to IDW in late 2018 after being renamed IDW president, in addition to its publisher and chief creative officer.
Ryall is credited with creating and overseeing a number of acclaimed comics/media and supply chain projects at IDW among them the Zombies vs Robots comics series with artist Wood; switching IDW book distribution to Penguin Random House Publisher Services, and launching an IDW Spanish-language graphic novel publishing program based around George Takei’s bestselling graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy.
“Change is often hard, and I will miss this extended family I have worked with for more than 15 years,” said Ryall. “We brought on some amazing hires, expanded the scope of many of the departments, and re-focused the foundation of the business to best support the integrated multi-media company that IDW has become.”
