BREAKING NEWS.

§ January 15th, 2025 § Filed under real world stuff, retailing § 21 Comments

So I know I was going to start my 2024 prediction review today, but some stuff has turned up that takes some precedence, I think.

First off, Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In short, that’s allowing Diamond to reorganize and sell off assets to stabilize its business. Those assets include Alliance, the gaming distribution company, and Diamond UK.

And, as noted in the press release quoted at that link, their “main comic, toy, and collectible distribution lines” are also up for sale. Which sounds a whole lot like the company trying to keep things going until they can sell off everything and close its doors.

Or maybe they’ll get their act together and go back to business as usual. I have no idea.

Now, when there was a major collapse of comic distributors in the 1980s, a number of publishers were left being owed payments by said distributors. I imagine if Diamond goes away, the same may happen now, hurting especially the smaller publishers and possibly taking them down with them. Which is the main reason I’m hoping Diamond pulls through, not leaving those vendors holding the bag.

According to Diamond, business will continue as usual while they’re going through this process, including the weekly shipments, reorders, damage replacements, etc. Amusingly they emphasized the fact that yes, retailers with Diamond accounts are expected to keep paying their invoices, in case anyone thought they didn’t need to keep exchanging money for goods from a company in Chapter 11.

Diamond also informed retailers that they’re still supporting Free Comic Book Day for the year, at least as far as things look now. That leaves me to wondering, of course, who would take over the FCBD event should Diamond eschew the responsibility.

And that leads me to wondering just how Diamond can survive, and what may rise up in its place. I’m picturing a much pared down Diamond, carrying only comics, supplies, and maybe some comic related merchandise. No nudie books, no Japanese schoolgirl statues, no tchotchkes that have nothing to do with comics. Catalogs are 32 pages long, shipments all come from a single warehouse. It all depends on whatever comic publishers are left over, and if they get enough orders to keep Diamond’s doors open even at this minimal level. I feel like Dynamite and its multiple covers for everything would be doing the heavy lifting here.

If the comic distribution end does get sold to another company, then I guess I’d have to apply for an account there if the old accounts simply don’t transfer over. Would there be a gap in shipments caused by this? Possibly. The most convenient solution would be for one of the other existing distributors to the Direct Market (Lunar or Penguin Random House) were to take over the comics end of Diamond.

Otherwise, if Diamond just closes up shop, leaving publishers high and dry, then…well, I’m picturing the ’80s again, with a half-dozen distributors all carrying their own selection of items. Which is fine, if increasing the “paperwork” (or computer work, rather) at my end.

The very small press books are the ones that’ll be hardest hit, as a weird one-off book that’s easy for me to say “yes” to as a line item with everything else in the Diamond catalog, may get missed or overlooked entirely if they’re only available from some tiny distributor with not enough for me to bother opening an account.

Ideally, whatever happens my customers don’t see any problems from their end, that the comics continue coming out, regardless from where I get them. We’ll see how things shake out over the next few month.

Now, I’ve long ago transferred as much of my business as I could away from Diamond to other distributors. Diamond had just too many problems over the years…poor packing resulting in damaged comics, items being shorted entirely and not having the stock to replace them, getting a single copy of Comic Shop News instead of the full bundle (the most baffling shipping error). Getting alternative distributors was an outright relief, where (aside from a disastrous damage-ridden initial shipment from Penguin Random House) my shipments have been relatively damage-and-shortage free.

Since the advent of distribution competition, Diamond actually fixed most of these problems. Too little too late, I’m afraid. The vast bulk of my orders come from the other two distributors, with Diamond’s shipments being only a fraction of the size they used to be. The weekly payments to Diamond are so much smaller now than before, and I’d wonder “if everyone’s invoices shrunk this much, I wonder how Diamond is able to survive?” And, well…I guess I have that answer.

This is just a smattering of thoughts I’ve had on the topic. I’m sure I’ll throw more at you when I’ve had more time to process the situation, and as we experince the continuing ramifications.

• • •

The other big news of the week is this article (may be paywalled, but you can find other articles covering its contents) with its in-depth look at the sexual assault claims against Neil Gaiman. WARNING: the descriptions therein are very explicit and upsetting, so you may be better off finding someone else’s summary.

This situation is very disappointing and disillusioning, to hear that such a talented force admired by so many is an alleged creep credibly accused by multiple victims. And it doesn’t help that Gaiman’s own statement, posted on his official site just yesterday, smacks of the same meaningless platitudes that Warren Ellis threw out there when he was outed as a sex pest.

“Innocent until proven guilty,” I know, and Gaiman claims his relationships with all these women were consensual. But…man, this doesn’t look good for him. Even Scott McCloud, who had a longtime friendly relationship with the man, is like “hoo boy.”

I’ve written before about the possible impact on the comics publishing end, which now seems like an inevitability. DC’s challenge is divorcing the Sandman franchise from its creator, and Marvel’s challenge of wrapping up Miracleman, while on a much smaller and less impactful scale, is still one they have to face.

But like I said then, this is the least of the issues at stake here. It’s an ugly situation, leaving some very hurt women in its wake, and one hopes some justice may be found here.

21 Responses to “BREAKING NEWS.”

  • Thom H. says:

    Using your reputation as a “writer for women” as a gateway to target women for sexual assault is just extra repulsive. Rapists will apparently twist anything to their favor in order to keep raping.

    On an unrelated note, I’m very interested to see where the Diamond story heads next.

  • Chris Gumprich says:

    My first 2025 prediction may well come true. I swear I had no inside knowledge of Diamond’s collapse, I was guessing based on Mikester’s issues with the distributor… it sounded like a company on the verge of collapse.

  • Oliver says:

    I never really got into Gaiman, in part because I happened to have read a lot of Clive Barker beforehand — Gaiman couldn’t help but feel like weaksauce in comparison. And while Barker (for all I know) may be no saint, at least he’s never pretended to be one.

  • Mike Loughlin says:

    I was a Gaiman fan, and I’m extremely disappointed in him and sickened by his actions. My heart goes out to all his victims.

    I’m not surprised that Diamond filed for Chapter 11. I have no idea how any distributor could make money without its biggest sources of revenue. I really hope it doesn’t affect retailers and their earnings, it’s hard enough to make a buck without extra headaches.

  • Chris V says:

    The local comic store decided to stay loyal to Diamond. It seems they won’t get their shipment of Marvel, Dark Horse, or other independents until Friday. Although, that date is still questionable.

  • CalvinPitt says:

    I’ve read enough here on your blog, and heard a lot from various comic stores I’ve bought from over the years to know Diamond is a headache for the store owners.

    I admit, as a customer, I did appreciate being able to have pretty much one place to go and find dozens of publishers, many of which I never would have heard of otherwise. If Diamond does go under entirely and things get split up between lots of distributors, I wonder how difficult it’s going to get to find smaller titles.

    As for Gaiman, I don’t know that I’ve read anything of his, though whenever I saw someone reference something he’d said on social media, he gave the impression of being a decent, humble guy. Guess that was an act, or at least mostly an act.

  • Patrick Watson says:

    In the 1995, you had Marvel buy Heroes World, DC went exclusive to Diamond and eventually Image followed suit and Capital City ended up going out of business as did Heroes. I know that Friendly Frank’s and Bud Plant used to distribute in the ’80’s, were there other big distributor bankruptcies that took out publishers?
    My first ever orderpack as a shop manager, our store went from a Capital store to a Capital, Diamond, Heroes store. COMTRAC could not keep up to say the least.

  • Wayne Allen Sallee says:

    I was at my cancer doctor this morning, ready to open a new trade of FAHRENHEIT 451 (Ray Bradbury, of course). Damn if there was a new intro by Gaiman. Can’t deface a book, but I guess pages can get folded and glued together by mistake. Right?

    I met Gaiman at a convention in Rhode Island in 1988. He showed up in a central room where everyone was talking, we didn’t know him, he didn’t know us. He played off as humble–and I can’t judge him from that long ago–but at conventions you network. So there’s X who you talk to in a group, then the same X you leave alone because he might be talking to an editor or setting up a gig. A few years after, X might be left alone because he was talking to a fan.

    Look up the author of VAMPIRE JUNCTION then think of underage boys. That is the only time I know of that this sort of thing was discovered, thankfully, very quickly.

  • Chris V says:

    SP Somtow? I have never heard anything like that about Somtow. As far as I know, he still has a his legs career in both the United States and Thailand. Both as an (occasional) author and a conductor.

  • Chris V says:

    *a viable career…not sure why it changed that to “a legs career”.

  • ExistentialMan says:

    Good lord. I JUST submitted my 2025 predictions TWO DAYS AGO with one of them being that Diamond will still be in business at the end of the year. Just the opposite of your prediction, Chris! Oh well, like you said, maybe they’ll reorganize on a smaller scale and my prediction with still be true.

  • ExistentialMan says:

    Also met Gaiman over 20 years ago at an indy book store signing in Kettering, Ohio. I’m not really a “separate the work from the creator” kind of person so I’m in the process of removing all of his work from my collection. Not sure if I’ll store it or just toss it. Regardless, it’s A LOT of stuff.

  • Jack says:

    About the Neil Gaiman thing.

    It stings, because I had a lot of his work, and genuinely liked most of it-looking back, now, I can say that he peaked for me with American Gods, and he’d been cruising on reputation ever since. His comics work had been growing less and less interesting; for me the more he became a novelist and television guy, the worse his comics work got. (Said this on Bluesky in a comment thread on one of Mike’s posts, but you’d think “the Eternals drawn by John Romita Jr.” would be impossible to screw up, and yet Gaiman did.) And aside from writing for Doctor Who (one episode amazing, one pretty dire), he was basically cannibalizing his career anyway. And I’d grown tired of his social media being 120% a hype machine for his various television projects. He’d become a Brand, and a boring one at that.

    But I was still appalled by the accusations in the first place, sickened when I read the article, and infuriated when I read his blog post trying to justify himself by basically saying “yeah sure it’s true, but it wasn’t WRONG, right guys?”

    Tomorrow is trash day here, and when my trash can is dumped tomorrow, every damn thing I owned with Neil Gaiman’s name on it is going to be dumped into the garbage truck. All of Sandman, his novels and short story collections, all of it. (His Marvel stuff I sold years ago, and I was going to wait to see if Miracleman was ever finished before touching that.) All gone. The copy of the Doll’s House trade paperback was a first printing. 1990, almost thirty five years old (I am turning to dust as I type that.)

    Trashing it was the easiest decision I’ve ever made. To hell with him.

  • Snark Shark says:

    “Catalogs are 32 pages long”.

    That’s one of the reasons I haven’t bought a catalogue in a long time. Over 100 pages, mostly filled with a LOTTA crap!

    “Diamond had just too many problems over the years… getting a single copy of Comic Shop News instead of the full bundle (the most baffling shipping error)”

    That one’s kind of hilarious! I guess THAT’S why I never see those things around any more.

    “Neil Gaiman”

    I’m keeping my Sandman TPBs. I wouldn’t buy anything new he did. I love that series! It’s one of the few from that era (that I was reading when new) that still holds up well, I think I started reading around issue #7/8, and read up until the end. I never bothered with the re-boot/re-start, whatever it was. The story was told the first time.

  • Andrew Davison says:

    As regards Gaiman, all I have to go on is his work which paints a likeable picture. Put that against a large number of believable allegations.

    JOKE: he’s clearly going to have to change his name to get published in the future: Neil BDSMman (?)

  • Oliver says:

    The kiss Marvelman gave Dickie certainly comes across as even more icky now, as does the humiliation Gaiman heaped upon the Lyta Trevor character.

    (As an aside, what Gaiman did to Lyta reminds me of Grant Morrison insouciantly killing off Tempest in Doom Patrol — sometimes it’s the oh-so-progressive kids who end up treating the female & PoC characters more contemptuously than the old Boomer workhorses ever did, eh?)

  • Wayne Allen Sallee says:

    At Chris V. Yes, Somtow. And it was his native Thailand who reported the charges, but Somtow was here in the US. Back in Thailand, there was one specific incident that warranted police to go to a hotel. He was questioned about noise or something, but a young teenage boy was in a bed.

    Past that, he stopped writing and had this info hanging over his head. My point was that once a creative gets well-known, the stories come out, 100% true, 50% true. But everything about Somtow came out after his book was up for an award. And this was how the World Horror and World Fantasy cons were like back then. Yes, he still writes, but nothing like when VJ came out. And it wasn’t like a flash in the pan. The book was good and deserved the nomination.
    Maybbe his viable career is in Thailand. But my point is, true, almost true, whatever, we find things out after. Like with Warren Ellis. It’s sad that fame is what it takes, even if it takes a long time.

  • Andrew says:

    From what I understand, it’s been the same guy at the head of Diamond since it’s creation. Knowing that, continuing to not learn from your mistakes has been the downfall of alot of big companies, and unfortunately it looks like it’s been a long time coming for Diamond. Even after all the competitors popped up and chances for improvement.

  • Allan Hoffman says:

    The Neil Gaiman situation is just horrible. He was one of my favorite authors and Sandman was MY comic.

  • Snark Shark says:

    This was mentioned a few months back, but I wonder if DC will keep all the Sandman TPBs in print now.

  • will richards says:

    Please don’t make jokes about the Gaiman issue.

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