Diamond would also have traveling sales reps who’d come to your store…PICK UP THE SLACK, LUNAR.

So the other night, as I was working on my Final ’90s Countdown post about Strange Attractors, I did what I usually do when prepping these and tried to log into the old Diamond Comics retailer portal. While that version of Diamond was no longer an operative business, having since become “Diamond Select Brands,” a division of Enesco, the product database was still (mostly) functioning on the old site and I would use it for research.

When I tried to log in last night, and received an error message (503 Service Unvailable”), which I figured wasn’t a good sign. Then I checked the page on Wednesday afternoon, and I got this:

I don’t know how long the page has been this way — I think I logged in last week, but that’s a thing of the past now. All that information, shipping dates, cancellation notices, production descriptions, all gone. I’d hoped there would have been some kind of bulk download of this info, or a back-up on the Internet Archive, but no dice. But if anyone from Diamond is reading this and needs to offload a copy of that product database, you know how to get a hold of me.

I pointed this out here and there online, and “end of an era” has been a common refrain. Not a 100% good era, not a 100% bad era, but it was definitely an era, and it was very easy to see a possible path to its end bringing about the end of the comics retail business as we know it.

Thankfully, there were companies…um, optimistic enough to pick up comics distribution, though some small press items have been lost in the shuffle. And aside from some early glitches here and there, it’s been a relatively smooth transition and as things stand now, my ordering from these new companies has become a regular and trouble-free routine, at least for me. (I know other retailers’ mileage may vary.) I’ve even picked up a toy and merchandise distributor to cover that end of the market, and am currently in the process of signing up with another such company.

I’ve even ordered a couple of things from The New Diamond…actually, one item I got in was a carryover from an order placed with Old Diamond before it fell. However I’ve since ordered a couple of figures from this latest iteration, which is now primarily toys, statues, game items, and other related products.

It’s sad to see that old website go…I can still remember logging into the Diamond BBS (that’s “Bulletin Board System,” for the terminally young amongst you) to enter and upload orders. And of course, prior to that, stores had to fill out order sheets and mail ’em off. I’m not sure what the next version of “Comics Ordering” is going to be, if it’ll be like “please submit your numbers via TikTok video,” but whatever it is, I’m sure I’ll be doing that too.