Comics distribution questions in 2025
Word Balloons #1253: Things may get weird, but comics will survive
The questions raised by the Chapter 11 filing of Diamond Comics Distribution, Inc., for years the largest distributor of comic books in the United States, are dominating a lot of the discourse in the industry currently.
While I don’t frequently go “inside baseball” with this column, and while I don’t have particular inside knowledge other than my years of experience as a comic retailer, I thought it was still worthwhile to run down some of the scenarios and look at what effect that might have, especially through the lens of my own store.
Diamond’s UK branch and Alliance Game Distributors could potentially be acquired by Canadian distributor Universal.
According to Diamond’s news release on the Chapter 11 filing, Diamond has received a stalking horse bid for Alliance Game Distributors and has entered into a Non-Binding Letter of Intent (LOI) with Universal to acquire Diamond UK.
Diamond is seeking a buyer for its remaining business operations, including the North American comics distribution arm. If it doesn’t find one by April 1, it is expected to cease operations and lay off its employees. That would be bad for the 168 or so folks affected for sure – and it probably wouldn’t be great for small publishers or comic shops.
I do think most comic shops would weather the loss of Diamond, though the loss of the data management Diamond does would be problematic, and it almost certainly would cut down the variety of products available. The loss of the Previews catalog would make many items more difficult to find information about. Also, Diamond works as a de facto toy distributor for many comic shops that can’t afford the minimums needed from manufacturers or that simply want more of a variety. Diamond also carries many more publishers than either of its main competitors, Lunar and Penguin Random House.
DC Comics moved from Diamond during the pandemic, setting up with Lunar, a spinoff of the DCBS customer ordering service. Image later followed. Marvel, meanwhile, has signed on with PRH, as have IDW and Dark Horse. PRH allowed Diamond to still carry these publishers at a slightly reduced discount. One item that may cause kerfuffles later on – it appears that PRH is passing the unpaid debt from the Diamond bankruptcy on to the publishers. Seems like that will be a legal question for later. Neither PRH or Lunar carry merch and accessories at nearly the depth of Diamond.
So far, many of the midlist publishers have made their way to Lunar, including Mad Cave and TwoMorrows. Diamond’s biggest remaining exclusives appear to be Dynamite, Titan and DSTLRY, who may be waiting to see what happens with the company acquisition before making any major moves.
For our shop, Marvel, DC, and Image make up something like 68 percent of our sales. And that’s with our trying to stock a wide variety of new titles both in new comic and graphic novel sales. Adding IDW, Dark Horse and Boom! Studios would take that percentage to nearly 80 percent. Still, losing 20 percent of sales would cause pretty serious repercussions for most businesses. Some of the additional 20 percent are things like toys, games and supplies. Most of this could be sourced outside of Diamond – and some of it we currently do – but there are some product lines we might have to drop if Diamond or a Diamond successor isn’t around to carry them.
Potentially more troubling for the market would be the loss of publishers outside the Top 20 or so, if they aren’t able to land with Lunar or with PRH. If Universal or another distributor were to buy the North American Diamond apparatus, that might be the best possible short-term fix, to keep both access to market and the flow of data to stores similar in the near future. It would also likely at least partially alleviate the cashflow crunch many of the publishers may find themselves due to this situation. It’s possible more publishers could shift to a Kickstarter model, but it also seems likely there would be a saturation point for that market.
One significant negative for comic shops was, following the Diamond bankruptcy announcement, Lunar announced a large increase in cost to stores for Image Comics to take affect in 2026. Another situation that could turn into a negative is the fate of Free Comic Book Day, which historically was maintained and promoted by Diamond. I think it could be continued/maintained outside of Diamond; I’m not sure about the trademarks, but the idea was originally coined by retailer Joe Field.
What can you do in the short term? It’s a frequent recommendation of mine, but I’d say buy some stuff from your local comic shop. Let them know what comics you’re interested in – as it may get more challenging to source some comics and related items going forward.
Matthew Price, matthew@matthewLprice.com, has written about the comics industry for more than two decades. He is the co-owner of Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman.