With comic maker IDW Publishing celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, we spoke with IDW founder and CEO Ted Adams about the legacy of his company, as well as where it's headed in the future. IDW has made comics for video games, TV, and movies in addition to creating its own original hits.

Read on to hear Adams take you on a journey from the company's start to where it is now, visiting its biggest wins, hardest losses, and most iconic properties.

Because we're talking about IDW's 15th anniversary -- congratulations, by the way -- why don't you start by reflecting on how IDW got its start. How did it come to be known for adapting popular properties like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers?It didn't start with us doing things like Turtles or Transformers. We started with much smaller properties. Our first licensed comic book was based on the TV show CSI. At the time, that was a hugely successful TV show. This was quite some time ago, and we were able to get those rights because of the relationship we had with CBS. Even though that was a really successful TV show, at that time, people weren't really doing comic books based on those kinds of shows.Certainly, Dark Horse was doing Star Wars, and there were other licensed comics here and there, but nobody was doing something based on a TV show like CSI. So it gave us an opportunity to come in and try something new. We were fortunate that we had success with that. Then over time our catalog of licensed properties grew and grew.The first really big property that we took on was probably Transformers. In between CSI and Transformers we did a few other licensed properties like 24 and Angel and The Shield and a few other things here and there. But Transformers was the really big giant one that I think introduced us to a lot of comic fans in a way that we probably been before, because Transformers is such a giant worldwide brand.We've been doing video game adaptations for quite awhile. Our first batch were all with Konami. I don't remember the exact order they came out, but we did Castlevania, Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid -- all with Konami. Metal Gear Solid was great because we actually got to spend quite a bit of time with the game creator of Metal Gear Solid, and he was very hands-on in the development of those comic books. Almost all of those books were drawn by Ashley Wood, who's one of the first creators to start working with IDW. Those were some really terrific comics.On Silent Hill, which we were doing around that same time, some of those books were actually drawn by Ben Templesmith, who did 30 Days of Night for us. So those books were amongst the earliest licensed books that we were doing. Probably in most cases those were also kind of pre-Transformers in IDW's history. So those were certainly a big deal for us.Honestly, the Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill books continue to sell quite well today, because those properties are still hugely successful in the world of video games. We actually have a new Silent Hill comic that's coming out later this year. That'll be the first time we've done a new Silent Hill book in a couple years. So we're excited about that.But for some time we were also EA's publishing partner, so we did quite a few graphic novels with them. Probably the bestselling there was Dead Space. We've done Duke Nukem. We've had great success with Borderlands. We actually have another Borderlands series that's going to be an ongoing series that launches this summer as well.Video games are really something that have been in our blood from the very beginning. Even before we were publishing comic books, we were doing what's called "creative service work," meaning that we were doing art and design for entertainment companies. Many of our clients were video game companies.Well, typically it's discussing it internally with the editorial team and finding out if anybody has a good idea for the way that the comics could be done. So that's really step one for us, is making sure that we feel like we have a good creative approach to the content. Then, once it's something we think we can do right, the next step would be, on the business side, for a deal to get done with the rights holder. In most cases, the video game developers own the rights themselves, so we would actually be doing a deal with them directly.Well, with something like Turtles, which it's the 30th anniversary of Turtles, so there have literally been comics based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for 30 years. There's a huge, huge amount of material that already existed before we started publishing comics. For us, it's really a multi-pronged approach.One is to do nice deluxe editions of the original comics by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. We've done a series of books called Ultimate Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles, which collects the Eastman/Laird comics in oversized hardcover editions. So we're really supporting the legacy of their work and bringing that out in a format that never existed before. So that's an important part of what we do.Then we also have our own new version of the Turtles, which are the entry point for modern comic book readers. We take notes from the original material and from the things that have come before -- we're really putting our own spin on those. So those are actually plotted with Kevin Eastman, who of course is one of the creators of the Turtles, and written by Tom Waltz, who is our senior writer. So those comics are the ones that the modern comic readers, even if they weren't familiar with what had come before, could be introduced to the world of the Turtles.Then the other thing that we do is we actually produce comics based on the Nickelodeon cartoon, and we call those The New Animated Adventures. So those are the comics that would be directly aimed at those kids that are watching the new cartoon.I saw that, yeah. That was really nice to see. Yeah, I think Kevin and Tom and all the artists who work on that book have really -- it's a really fun series. I think it's nice because you don't really have to know the 30-year history of the Turtles to enjoy that comic. But if you do know the 30-year history, you're going to see a lot of easter eggs in there that are kind of fun.