Interview: Bobby Curnow on His Journey from Intern to IDW Editor-in-Chief

Bobby Curnow champions the oddballs, the outsiders, and the stories that defy convention—because he sees himself in them.

Over his 15-year career in comics, he’s edited more than 1,300 books, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Godzilla, and My Little Pony. He’s earned an Eisner Award nomination and now serves as Editor-in-Chief at one of the largest comic book publishers in the country, IDW.

But ask anyone who knows Bobby, and they won’t list his titles or accolades. They’ll tell you about his offbeat humor, his knack for surreal non sequiturs, and his uncanny ability to make the most nonsensical statement feel profound.

I met him in film school, where—among a sea of Very Serious Auteurs—we bonded over "Simpsons" quotes and obscure British sketch comedy. I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who can make me laugh harder, even if much of what he says doesn’t quite make sense until you hear him say it.

That out-of-the-box sensibility has shaped every step of Bobby’s career, from 29-year-old, unpaid intern to one of the most influential editors in comics. Bobby's never compromised who he is to fit someone else’s idea of success. And as he’s risen through the ranks, he’s championed others who dare to be just as weird as he is.

So, I sat down with him to discuss his winding career path—and how being on the outside looking in can be a secret weapon in the creative arts.

“A lot of misery exists in the world, but it absolutely doesn’t need to—which is kind of funny, so why not laugh?” Bobby tells me over Zoom. It turns out Bobby’s absurdism is more than a sense of humor—it’s a worldview.

“The guiding principle in my life is this world makes no sense. So, let's try and roll with it as much as we can. Cause what else are you gonna do with it? I guess you could fight it and become a great person and change the destiny of the world. But I don't know, I'm not that good.”

Another type of creative might think they can save the world. After all, what are superheroes but a reflection of a writer's desire to be the main character in their own grand, heroic narrative? But Bobby knows better—and I think that’s what makes him a great fit for comics.

He’s interested in the mundanity of everyday life.

"I’ve always been drawn to the stories on the sidelines. The people watching the hero, the ones with small, strange lives—that’s where I see myself, and that’s where there’s the most interesting storytelling. I think comics are perfect for people like me—people who might not see themselves in the big, iconic hero story but instead in the smaller, messier stories that feel more human."

In other words, outsider narratives. The kind of story Bobby sees as uniquely suited for comics.

“A lot of my best friends were in the outcast group, so I guess I’ve always considered myself one to a degree,” he tells me. “Comics are cool in that they attract weirdos who just want to make their own weird comics. It's addicting. When you have nothing, it can be something. Anyone can pick up a pencil. Unique voices are always going to be drawn to comics, squirting little injections of weirdness into society.”

Bobby’s creative journey began with British sketch comedy and cartoons. “The first time I started thinking about actual narrative was 'Looney Tunes' or 'Monty Python'—which was basically a live-action cartoon. It might as well have been from another planet. Anything could happen, which made me realize the only limitation to storytelling was imagination.”

It makes sense, then, that as a child, Bobby loved comics. “They were a way to let my imagination run wild,” he tells me. “They were little universes in my hands, completely mine to dive into. Anything and everything could happen. That was magical as a kid.”

That kind of outside-the-box style of storytelling isn’t a natural fit for film school, where the art of story structure and the crafting of 4-quadrant loglines are drilled into you from the moment you step into freshman orientation.

I ask Bobby what inspired him to apply to Movie College, rather than go right into a career in comics.

“Naivety,” he says succinctly. “Being a stupid kid. Not knowing everything that goes into filmmaking. When you’re a teenager, you think, ‘I can do that.’ I’m in theater club, and I wrote my own play. All of these things that make you think you’re a badass. But in reality they’re all signs you can’t get a date.”

Four years at one of the top film schools drilled that youthful naivety right out of him, teaching Bobby just how frustrating the medium can be: “I just wanted to create things. I wanted to tell stories and have them exist, not devote six months of my life, and $10,000, to making a short film that might never see the light of day."

After graduating, Bobby continued to write feature specs, including one co-written with this writer. His scripts took big swings—they were bold, funny, action-packed—and uniquely his own.

But, of course, none of them sold.

He quickly realized the harsh reality of the economics of being a writer: in the world of film and TV, hundreds—if not thousands—of tiny things need to go right for your work to get produced. It’s like Powerball, but with significantly worse odds.

“After graduation, I was still dreaming of the film world, but I had been exposed to it just barely long enough to realize how freaking frustrating it was and how totally not within my power it was to manifest anything.” Bobby was only in his early 20s and already found himself “disillusioned” by his chosen career path.

He took a series of day jobs, from a cashier at FAO Schwartz to working the desk at a sound equipment rental house. After a few years of creative frustration, he realized it was time for a pivot. He still wanted to write—but he wanted his work to exist beyond a Final Draft file.

So, he made a big, bold choice. He reached back to the wild, imaginative stories he loved so much as a child. “I wanted to tell some freaking stories! So, that was the beginning of my backtrack towards comics.”

He and an artist friend created their own book. No boundaries. No preconceived notions of what should be. They just told a small, messy story about an outsider.

I read every issue. It was great.

“I created Thomas the Broken Angel with our friend, Giancarlo Sidoti. Dozens of people read that max, if you said three digits, I'd be like, nah, probably not 100 people, no way. But it wasn't about that.” He pauses for a second, and a warm chuckle follows: “I still have those somewhere actually. They're worth tens of pennies.”

It wasn’t a money-making endeavor, but most good art isn’t. “At that time, it wasn’t about people reading the comic. It was about getting the story out of my head and into the world.”

A creative spark ignited when Bobby revisited his childhood muse, and he decided to take the idea of comic writing seriously. He enrolled in a class taught by a former editor at Marvel. Eventually, the editor moved to California to work at IDW Comics. Bobby reached out, asking what opportunities might exist for someone in their late 20s with zero credits to their name.

The editor told Bobby that if he wanted to learn more, IDW had internships. The only problem? He’d have to drop everything and move 3,000 miles away.

“Why did I entertain that? It’s hard for me to fathom at this moment. But I was like, yes, I will move across the country and take this unpaid internship. It wasn't even a job, it was just an experience that I thought might be beneficial in some way. I used a year's worth of savings, it made no sense whatsoever. But you know, when you're in your 20s, you're dumb, and you can take big left turns in your life.”

At first, it wasn’t easy. His partner at the time moved out west with him, but she settled hundreds of miles away, forcing him to commute from San Diego to Berkeley every weekend. “It was incredibly difficult on my personal life. I was like, what am I doing here? I don't know anyone. I was starting all over again, literally at the bottom at age 29."

But it wasn’t long before his big risk paid off. His enthusiasm and talent were apparent right off the bat—and, perhaps most importantly, he fit in. Comic people were his people. “There were a lot of bumps along the road, but it quickly felt right. I was in my element.”

After his internship ended, he was hired as an editor—a moment that signaled his arrival.

Those first few years at IDW proved to be something of a crash course for Bobby. Not every project he worked on was good, but every project taught him something. “At the beginning, there was a lot of garbage. I loved the people involved, but a lot of those comics were terrible. But I was learning from those failures. Figuring out what works.”

You can imagine the relief Bobby felt finally being able to create works that exist in the real world, guiding creators who, like him, had a penchant for the weird and wonderful. This new role didn’t just give him a paycheck; it gave him a platform. It was here that Bobby began refining his editorial voice, learning which off-kilter ideas could thrive on the printed page—and which needed a gentle nudge back toward coherence.

“I was able to get that screw-up period out of the way, and really learn what I was doing. By my second year, I began on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After that, I finally felt like I was making real books that were reaching a wider audience. That was the turning point.”

It wasn’t long before the industry began to take notice of Bobby’s work. He was given a wide portfolio of licensed titles, including the best selling IDW comic of all time, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin (a feature adaptation is currently in development at Paramount). “We were taking license comics, something that had always been seen as a joke, and proving they could be as good as anything else. It was intoxicating.”

At IDW, Bobby didn’t just find a job—he found a place where his creative voice was celebrated. He spent the next decade editing over 1,300 comics. As my friend rose through the ranks, what once set him apart—his fondness for the odd and absurd—became a genuine asset. The comic world at large sought out storytellers with unique perspectives, and he knew how to amplify them best. It’s no coincidence that someone who once considered himself an outsider found his place in such a world.

Yet, as the years rolled by and Bobby settled comfortably into his role, the creative spark that drove him began to dim. The industry’s gears, which had once clicked so nicely with his unique sensibilities, started feeling stuck. That’s when a restlessness crept in—a reminder that feeling at home isn’t the same as feeling fulfilled.

“I’d been at IDW for 12 years, and in many ways, I had been doing the same job I’d been doing as an intern.” Just like after film school, he found himself feeling disillusioned. “I was going through a period of asking myself: Can I continue doing this?” Bobby was ready for another big change.

So he did what he did all those years before—he took a big risk. He quit his job without any safety net.

“I was uncertain about it at the time. When you’re somewhere for a dozen years, it's your home, it's where you've learned to be an adult. It was tremendously difficult to make the voluntary decision to be like, no, this isn't enough for me, at least not where I am right now in my life.”

At this point, he considered leaving comics for good. “I thought I was done. I’d been so deep in it for so long, I wasn’t sure what else I could bring to the job anymore. I needed space away from the industry.”

After a few months of well-deserved rest, Bobby was offered a job as Editor-in-Chief at Magma Comix, a startup launched by former IDW colleague Denton Tipton. He was hesitant. “It took a couple of conversations to convince me there was something different here—something that could feel fresh again.”

After years at IDW, he’d been unsure about returning to comics at all. Yet Magma offered something new—an entire lineup of creator-owned projects with no IP overlords: “It was just the creators and their visions. It’s a wonderfully pure form of comics.”

In the end, he said yes—a move that harkened back to the days of Thomas The Broken Angel, when he and a friend got together to create the kind of comics they wanted to read.

At Magma, he plunged into startup culture—thrilling, uncertain, and exhausting in equal measure. “The crucial problem of a startup is funding,” he says. “When you’re a normal editor, it’s not your money. When you’re in a startup, it’s like, okay, this is us, if we fail—we’re done.” But that intensity also brought a kind of camaraderie he hadn’t felt in a while: “It’s really bonding, when it feels like us against the world.”

The experience was stressful, yes, but also “really rewarding and enriching.” Magma gave Bobby a chance to reconnect with the creative spark that first drew him into the medium. “It was a fundamental experience. Really fun … eye-opening.”

Working at a startup gave Bobby a clearer sense of who he was and what he wanted to accomplish. He spent a year at Magma, where his passion for comics was reignited. By the end of the experience, he was certain of the voices he wanted to uplift and the kinds of stories he wanted to tell.

And just when he wondered where to pour that hard-won insight, the phone rang …

It was IDW, calling with a proposition—they wanted him back, this time as Editor-in-Chief.

Bobby didn’t have to think too long. He tells me, “I dreamed of this trajectory once upon a time when I was an unpaid youngin. I was like, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be cool if I was editor-in-chief?’ you know, so that’s sort of irresistible …”

He started the job a few weeks ago. Talking to my friend now, I sense a lot of genuine optimism, “The staff, operations, and communication is largely different. A lot of these changes are for the better. They make a lot of sense.”

Of course, stepping into a more digitally integrated world comes with some hurdles. “I’m a bit of a Luddite in an increasingly digital landscape,” Bobby admits, but he’s ready to adapt and embrace the challenges ahead. The company he left behind years ago isn’t the same one he’s rejoining, but that’s the point. He’s not the same either.

Armed with lessons from his first run at IDW, and his time at Magma, Bobby aims to champion the idiosyncratic voices he’s always gravitated toward. “If you’re trying to follow a trend or do what everyone else is doing … it’s very easy to just get lost,” he says. Instead, he looks for creators who can embrace their own quirks. As he puts it, “a confidence with your own weirdness” is what sets work apart in a world overflowing with content.

And there’s more content than ever—“It’s never been easier for anyone to make a comic and get it out to the world.” For Bobby, this surge of new material isn’t a burden; it’s a chance to highlight truly unique stories—the kind that drew him to comics in the first place.

“Art is of vital importance to every single life,” he reminds me. “And everyone is the best artist of their own life.”

It’s this belief in the creative power of the individual that gives Bobby such optimism for the future of comics: “I’m confident that comics will always be the place where weird ideas—ones that tickle the imagination of humanity—will come from. That's totally independent of whatever is going on with technology or society. I take faith in that constant."

As I wrap up the Zoom with my old friend, I have time for one more question. From dropping everything to move 3,000 miles for an unpaid internship to quitting a stable job without any safety net, Bobby’s taken some wild swings. I’d like to know why.

Bobby isn’t quite sure. “I think about all the big decisions I made in my life, I don't really understand why I made them at the time, but now I'm like, okay, cool, old Bobby or young Bobby—well done.” His big, life decisions are a lot like his most absurdist jokes—they don’t really make sense unless Bobby’s the one behind them.

Listening to him, I can’t help but feel beneath all of his self-effacing quips and catchphrase-worthy non sequiturs, there’s a real optimism—about art, about storytelling, and about embracing who you are.

That optimism has carried him through every leap of faith. Bobby is convinced that truly personal art will find its audience. He believes in the eccentrics, the outsiders, and the storytellers who keep pushing forward, taking risks—even when the odds look bleak—just like he’s done throughout his career.

Bobby’s optimism speaks to a belief that all writers should hold dear: no matter how much the world shifts, there’s always room for the stories that come straight from the heart.

In a world that becomes more and more automated, filled with hobbyist creatives who think typing prompts into an A.I. is a form of high art, Bobby’s optimism is instructive. Human creativity is indomitable. Unstoppable.

Unless we stop it.

I can’t wait to see the art produced during Bobby’s tenure at IDW. I know it will be weird, wonderful, and just a little bit absurd. A lot like my friend.

*Feature photo: Bobby Curnow by Matthew Manson