A few weeks ago I wrote “it’s over,” regarding the Diamond- Consignment Group legal battle.
And it was as far as the trustee and the Ad Hoc Committee (with a few additions) go.
But Sparkle Pop, the entity that controls the actual inventory, has yet to be heard from. I was reminded of that by a legal filing yesterday:
Sparkle Pop, LLC (“Sparkle Pop”), Morgan W. Fisher, Chapter 7 Trustee for Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc., et al. (the “Trustee”), and the Consignment Group Members2 , by their undersigned attorneys, hereby stipulate and agree that Sparkle Pop shall have until Friday, August 28, 2026, to respond to the Joint Motion to Approve Settlement Pursuant to Fed. R. Bankr. P. 9019 (a) (Trustee and Ad Hoc Consignment Group) (D.I. 1309) filed on August 8, 2026, by the Trustee and the Consignment Group Members.
The agreement is that publishers will hand over to the Trustee their share of the money that Sparkle Pop made selling products, and in exchange publishers will be able to reclaim their inventory via a pick and pack and palletize process. Or have it destroyed, at their expense. The settlement included very strict and thoroughly spelled out processes for the pik&pak action. Sparkle Pop would be paid to do it at market rates, or publishers could hire another company to do it.
But it seems that Sparkle Pop has yet to agree to this settlement.
That’s right, gang, it’s the Carrie ending.
In case you have forgotten, Sparkle Pop is the holding company that bought the assets of Diamond Comics, including the lease to the Olive Branch Warehouse which contained all the inventory. Since then, Sparkle Pop liquidated most of the inventory, and was selling some of the consignment inventory (which they did not own) until the court told them to stop almost a year ago. Since then they have been charging the Diamond estate $125,000 a month to store the stuff.
I’ve had several conversations with folks involved who wondering is Sparkle Pop will go along with the settlement…or throw some spanners in the works. In recent filings, they complained about the difficulty of finding and packing the stock:
18. Finally, it will be a very cumbersome and expensive process for Sparkle Pop to make the consigned goods available for retrieval whether that be by the Trustee or the Consignors. This difficulty exists because, among other things, (a) the consigned goods are not organized by consignor; and (b) the consigned goods are not packaged or otherwise ready to be retrieved. The market rate for these types of goods to be “Picked and Packed” and moved to the loading docks for retrieval will ultimately depend on how the owners of these consigned goods want the goods to be staged.
Key word: expensive. We’ll find out on Friday just what that means.
