Imagining a World without Diamond
It’s no secret that the comics industry has been in a state of uncertainty –bordering on chaos – for the past few months. Diamond Comic Distributors, the industry’s preeminent distribution company, announced in January that they were seeking chapter 11 bankruptcy protections and new ownership.
I’m not going to go into the history of the first half of this year or the still-unfolding fallout from that announcement. There has been a lot of good reporting on the subject already, and I am by no means an expert on the business end of this mishegoss. But I will say a few things about how we got here and where we might be going.
The distribution end of the comics industry has been going through a slow-motion car crash for several years, starting when the country (mostly) went into lockdown in spring 2020. Diamond made the decision to stop shipping comics, which led to DC Comics to find new distribution opportunities to keep product flowing to stores that had found new ways to sell comics. Those new partners were Lunar Distribution (still around and bigger than ever) and UCS Distribution (which decided not to continue).
Losing DC as a distribution client was just the first in a series of changes that have had a negative impact on Diamond. Penguin Random House, which had been distributing to bookstores for several comics publishers, had steadily expanded its roster of publisher clients from the comics space, and has taken over distribution for both books and periodicals for publishers including Marvel and Dark Horse. About a year ago Boom! Studios was purchased by PRH, which everyone knew would lead to PRH taking over their distribution from Diamond. And earlier this year, Image Comics moved to Lunar for their own distribution needs in response to Diamond’s chapter 11 announcement.
Until just a couple of weeks ago, Diamond served as a sub-distributor for publishers including Marvel, Image, and Dark Horse. But as Diamond’s new ownership stepped into position, PRH made the decision to stop allowing Diamond to serve in this capacity. Retailers who were able to order, say, Marvel titles through Diamond no longer can do so, forcing many of them to shift hastily set up accounts with PRH.
Diamond announced its new owner, Ad Populum, one month ago. This includes the purchase of other Diamond units such as Diamond Book Distributors, Diamond Select Toys & Collectibles, and others. Diamond’s Alliance Game Distributors, meanwhile, was purchased by Canadian company Universal Distribution.
Part of the current uncertainty in the comics biz stems from the fact that in the past month we’ve heard next to nothing from Ad Populum or Diamond’s existing management. It would not have been surprising to see a statement like “Ad Populum treasures the comics market and our new retailer partners, and we’ll have more to tell you soon.” At this point we don’t know their intentions. We don’t even know if there will be a Diamond Previews catalog next month – and while some might roll their eyes and think Diamond should have gone digital with Previews long ago, I will point out that Diamond Previews was in a way a record of the industry for many years. I picked up the latest Previews last week and was told for the third month in a row, “This could be the last one ever.”
On top of that, retailers report that Diamond has been delivering product late regularly for months now, possibly due to the closure of their Plattsburgh warehouse in November. Between that, the loss of most of their bigger publishers, and smaller publishers migrating to Lunar and PRH, retailers have had to shift their ordering to Lunar and PRH – something I’ve seen first hand based on actual numbers for a recent project that was available through Diamond and Lunar. And this gibes with the chatter at this year’s ComicsPro meeting back in February, where the primary topics for the weekend among retailers seemed to be “how do we move forward?” and “who are you going to order from?”
Aside from losing the big ol’ Previews catalog, what other possible fallout might we see if Ad Populum shutters Diamond? Several things leap to mind. First, many retailers use Diamond’s ComicSuite, a point of sale system that stores ordering data going back decades which retailers rely on to inform their current ordering patterns. Word is that ComicSuite is still up and running, but that some of the support staff have been let go. If ComicSuite goes, retailers may well lose all that valuable ordering data. Diamond’s PullList, which allows retailers to take orders from their customers for upcoming titles, is equally vulnerable.
Another thing that could fall by the wayside in the future is Diamond’s generally liberal policies with comic shops when it comes to payments and debt. It’s an open secret that Diamond has worked to help retailers in financial distress, something that grew out of Diamond’s close relationships with the retailer community, since Diamond founder Steve Geppi was himself a brick-and-mortar retailer back in the day. Regardless of the outcome, these practices engendered a lot of good will on the part of retailers.
Last things I’ll mention that we would lose – and these affect publishers as much as they do retailers: Diamond’s Vendor Services and Retailer Services pages. On the Vendor Services page, publishers can look at each of their titles and see current orders, reorders, inventory, and more. On the Retailer Services page, retailers can look for preview pages and marketing tools from upcoming comics, check on any changes before the order increase cutoff dates, and more.
I’m sure there’s more I haven’t thought of. And let me make this clear: I don’t want Diamond to crumble. Diamond isn’t perfect, but it is an institution in this industry. And yeah, I have quite a few friends who work there, and I do not want them to lose their jobs. Diamond has already lost quite a few employees – some to redundancies with the new ownership, some to new opportunities. Let’s hope that Ad Populum is about to spring a great plan for the future on us all, one that will lead the industry to stabilize and – dare I say it? – even grow.