Lion Forge Comics associate editor Hazel Newlevant reports that they are one of several employees who have been laid off by the company. Last week, Lion Forge announced they were undergoing a restructuring that necessitated laying off 12 staff members, which was roughly 20 percent of the publisher’s workforce.
Newlevant was made an editor at Lion Forge back in October 2017. A Portland-raised, Queens-residing cartoonist, Newlevant’s comics include “Tender-Hearted,” “Sugar Town,” “No Ivy League,” and “If This Be Sin.” They edited and self-published the anthologies “Chainmail Bikini” and “Comics For Choice,” the latter of which earned Newlevant and co-editors Whit Taylor and Ø.K. Fox this year’s Ignatz Award for Outstanding Anthology. Newlevant is currently working on an expanded version of their graphic memoir “No Ivy League” (originally published by JMC Aggregate), which Lion Forge is set to publish in August 2019.
Newlevant and Whit Taylor are also among 11 creators being sued by an indie publisher “because of concerns they [publicly] raised about a fellow creator’s alleged pattern of sexual misconduct.” A GoFundMe page has been organized by the Small Press Expo to help raise legal funds for Newlevant, Taylor and the others, which at the time of writing has raised $82,740 of its $120,000 goal. Warren Barnard, executive director of SPX, currently estimates the final legal expense could be in “the low six figures.”
