Drew Ford, the founder of It’s Alive! small press house and former editor of Dover Comics, died on Sunday, October 2, 2022. His wife, Aki Uesugi, stated that he died of COVID-19 related pneumonia. He was 48 years old.

Ford earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Long Island University and began his comics career in the early 1990s. He had work in Negative Burn, Vampirotica, and Rib, and published and edited the sci-fi zine Cosmic Waves. At Dover Publications, he was the Acquisitions Editor for the graphic novel line, acquiring out of print titles like The Puma Blues, Murder by Remote Control, and The BOZZ Chronicles.

Ford collaborated with Sam Glanzman to publish the writer-artist’s World War II collections, A Sailor’s Story and U.S.S. Stevens: The Collected Stories. The two worked together again when Ford started It’s Alive!, first with Red Range and then with The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz (to be published by Dark Horse in 2023).

In 2016, he founded It’s Alive! as an IDW imprint, then turned it into an independent venture in 2019. He continued acquiring out of print titles at It’s Alive! including Dope, and published newer titles like Pink Lemonade. Ford utilized crowdfunding campaigns to bring attention to his titles and get the projects off the ground.

Ford was also the writer of the middle grade graphic novel Steam and was a special projects editor for Marvel in the 2010s.