Diamond Comic Distribution (the primary distributor for comic book stores) has filed for bankruptcy. Diamond was/is THE distributor for comics. Shipping everything from Spider-Man to Akira to Flaming Carrot to direct to just about every store in the U.S. and many overseas.  Though very recently Marvel, DC, and Image comics have found other routes to distribute...which I'm sure played no small part in this.

First thing to keep in mind is that at one point Marvel Comics itself filed for bankruptcy, they later rebounded to the point of becoming the pivotal force in pop culture. So this doesn't have to be as dire as it may seem.

Second thing is, there are many in the comic book industry, who are reacting to this news with glee (I'll be explaining why, shortly) which is very short sighted and lacking in seeing the big picture.

 Diamond has been around for over 40yrs. That is 40 plus years that stores did not have to give one thought to how to operate without a central all encompassing distributor. The average reader might not realize this, but there are HUNDREDS of different comic book publishers. Even if you only wanted to stock your shelves with the top 200 books, you're still talking 50-70 different publishers. Imagine placing orders / dealing with that many publishers individually. There are a few other large-ish distributors currently...will they be around in 40 years? in five years? in 6 months? How will stores get their books and how much hassle will it be? It's been decades since we've had to ask such a question.

Diamond somehow managed to live through a complete shutdown of shipping companies in 2020, they've weathered strikes going on at UPS, and ever other damn problem think you could think of, since 1982, and stayed standing...keeping shelves stocked with comic books.  Every person who is part of the comic book industry would do well to remember that.  For whatever errors they've made here and here...this industry has always known who will get the comic books onto the shelves.

For independent publishers and small press Diamond had the reputation of being some evil gatekeeper.  That was never the case, everyone got as fair a shot as you'd get in any industry and more fair than most. If they thought your book could make money, they'd carry it. You had three issues to get your orders up to 1000 copies an issue...which is bending over backwards to give you a chance, if you keep things in perspective. They carry Spider-man and Batman for f*cks sake and they're willing to keep books around that sell 1000 copies?!

A large part of the actual problem was that many indy guys, for some reason thought it was Diamond's job to get people to buy their comics. It wasn't and never has been. It's their job to make your book available, send you the order for however many comics the stores wanted, and then send them to the store. That's it. The rest was/is up to you. So the giant majority of indy books failed because they either sucked, didn't advertise well enough, or both.

There are stores out there that loath Diamond for various reasons, mostly because of instances of lateness/damaged products, that sort of thing.  Their most recent trouble in this regard, and a genuine problem, is that they merged their two largest hubs together at the very end of last year. AND...it has not gone smoothly and some stores are telling me it's been nigh two months of books being late.

That is not good. It's not good because in the world of the comic book reader, Wednesday is new comic book day. It has been for decades. They are in the habit/routine of going to their local shop on Wednesday for their new comics. That's not a habit you want them to break, whether you are a store, a publisher or a pro. I can certainly understand that pissing off a lot of stores. For that matter any lateness ever, or damaged goods...harms your business if you're a comic store owner.

But let's keep things in perspective. Let's give credit where credit is do. Much of what Diamond gets blamed for is out of their control, like- the weather, when the books actually get to them from the publisher and in what condition, what happens to the books in between leaving their hubs and UPS getting them to stores.  

Whatever adjustments they make or do not during their bankruptcy...the bottom line is they fix that lateness problem immediately or they go the way of the dinosaur. and then what? Luna Distribution, for example, is very good...but can they take on all of Diamond's business, out of the blue, with less trouble that we're seeing from just two Diamond hubs being combined? Two hubs being combined by a distributor who's been doing this for four decades?


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Truth be told to you all, this ain't really an industry in the position to give the finger to any entity making unintentional mistakes in it's role, or mocking it's struggles. It's just not. With the whole world quickly deciding they don't GAF about the MCU anymore...I don't think headlines of the largest comic book distributor going out of business is the image we're looking for. So, a bit of circling the wagons and figuring out how to make a positive out of a negative is what's called for here. Difficult as that may be...we all use our imagination, we can each figure something out OR...we could all wallow in the bad press, and mock the company that kept us in all in business, and watch comic book collecting become as relevant as collecting stamps or fishing lures...that'd be another option.  I'd prefer the former option over the latter.