If you’re IN the comics industry you’ve probably spent the last week talking about what Diamond’s filing Chapter 11 means for the comics industry. If you’re NOT in the industry you might want to know what people have been talking about. This is very much an ongoing process so as we wind up a very, very long and grueling week in comic book news, here’s where we stand. 

§ Although bankruptcy sounds dire (and can be) some companies do come back from a Chapter 11, and the robust $41 million debtor-in-process funding that Diamond has from Chase suggests they will have funding. Diamond will continue business as usual, that is shipping books, while they try to stabilize to pay their creditors. Although Image Comics announced via Lunar that they would no longer be wholesaling comics through Diamond, Diamond is still in talks with them, per a news alert that went out:

Dear Diamond Customer:

We have received a copy of an email sent to retailers stating that Image Comics has chosen not to fulfill Diamond Comic Distributors customers’ orders for products with an FOC date of January 13, 2025.

We will be meeting with Image to discuss this issue, but will not be able to do so in time to affect these products.

We are honoring Image’s request that we cancel orders for this week’s affected products ONLY. As to products with FOC dates of January 20 and beyond, we will update you as soon as we have discussed the issue with Image and have a resolution.

We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work with our industry partners to minimize disruptions for our retailer customers. We will provide updates as soon as they are available.

§ And what of other publishers carried by Diamond? They have been mostly quiet with public facing statements. 

§ Despite all this activity, Diamond Comics is currently selling off or attempting to sell off its various businesses. Alliance Games and Diamond UK are the most successful divisions, and Canada’s Universal Distribution has put in offers for both. Could Universal be interested in buying other Diamond divisions? There are rumors floating around but just rumors. 

§ What about Diamond’s OTHER businesses, like Gemstone Publishing which puts out the Overstreet Price Guide? It’s not entirely clear where they lie in Steve Geppi’s various businesses, but they were not mentioned in any of the filings that I read. 

§ And what about Previews, that maddening yet endearing 400+ page monster of a catalog that Diamond puts out every month? In the FAQ about the bankruptcy, Diamond wrote “As this process moves forward, we will announce any changes to PREVIEWS as more information is available.”  This sounds a bit ominous. Previews was an industry institution and we shall never see its like again. 

§ Retailers we’ve talked to, and retailers people we’ve talked to have talked to remain surprisingly…..upbeat in all this? This is such a shocking change from typical retailer behavior – where once new logos or cover treatments were treated as the end of comics as we know it – that I’m suspicious, but the truth is that retailers have been moving away from Diamond for quite a while. They can easily get DC, Marvel, Image, Dark Horse, Viz, Scholastic, IDW and other publishers’ products. This is not Doomsday for them. 

§ As for industry talk about the bankruptcy, there are two good places to start. If you want old school blood and thunder and boiling hot takes, this post by Brian Hibbs on FB is an utter classic, with retailers, former DC and Marvel marketing execs, and Diamond founder Steve Geppi (and me) all chiming in. There are more than 200 comments so it’s a lot to digest but some interesting stuff buried in there.   

 

(I strongly disagree with Brian that DC is squarely to blame for this, as do others, but my heat of the moment comments in the thread aren’t exactly right either. I go into this more on the episode of PW Comics World’s More To Come podcast that comes out today, and I’ll drop the link in here when it goes live.)

§ For a calmer discussion that includes smiling, check out this live-stream from Prana’s Atom Freeman and Brian Garside of Manage comics. This dropped on the Tuesday the news broke and has live call-ins from retailers and other informed parties

Freeman and Garside will be doing a regular livestream on Tuesdays going forward and I look forward to checking it out. 

§ Rob Salkowitz at ICv2 also weighs in with A Few Thoughts on the Diamond Bankruptcy, including ramifications of PRH taking a $9 million hit. 

Now you might say PRH writ large is big enough to absorb that kind of a hit, but assuming the comics distribution business is being run as a separate P&L, not being profitable because of bad debt write-offs is a big deal.  If the odds of PRH picking up some of Diamond’s smaller accounts were already slim to none, it’s safe to say “slim” has left the building.  I hope I’m wrong about this, but PRH’s strategy to date has given us no reason to believe preserving the long tail of publishers in the Direct Market was ever the company’s main priority once they locked Marvel Comics down, and it seems even less likely now.

§ While there could be some seismic news bomb that drops after I post this column, God, I hope not. I intend to take a good long nap to recharge my batteries for the week ahead…and I hope you all get to do the same. 

2 COMMENTS

  1. Retailers also remain upbeat, because the intention seems to be ‘business as usuall for the moment’ and to honor past orders as must as possible so that there is the least possible amount of disruption. Image is throwing in a spanner of course (It IS Image, and not Lunar refusing to accept new FOC’s, right?), which is odd, because they are nowhere to be seen on the ’30 Biggest Creditors List’, though Todd McFarlane’s Toy Company is…..

  2. In the 35 odd years I’ve worked in the industry, I can only think of one time when publishers came together to discuss and plan for the betterment of the industry, not the individual companies themselves.

    San Diego Comic-Con organized a retreat in San Francisco. About eight publishers were invited.

    If memory serves me correctly, Terry Cavanaugh was publisher for Marvel at that time. He refused to go as he thought he had better things to do. He sent Matt Ragone, head of Marketing at the time. Paul Levitz refused to go because Terry wasn’t going. He sent Bob Wayne. Mike Richardson didn’t go because Terry and Paul weren’t going. He sent David Scroggy.

    It was a good few days of interesting discussions and debates but there were few decision makers there so not much came of it.

    It’s a shame they didn’t show up, so we could have seen clearly that there were no visionaires at the top of the biggest companies.

    Let’s see how this all plays out today.

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