Comic Store In Your Future With 2024 Ending Like A Dumpster Fire

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Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, DC Comics, Image, Marvel Comics | Tagged: diamond, lunar

Comic Store In Your Future… with 2024 ending like a dumpster fire, Rod Lamberti takes a look at challenges a comic store currently faces.

“Wow,” “wow” is my thought as a comic store owner as 2024 ends. Not a good “wow”, a “wow” how bad could it get for comic stores at the end of 2024? How crazy could the end of 2024 be? When I first read an email from Diamond stating they were closing a warehouse and there could be disruptions, I took it to mean a few hiccups, such as a title or two not being shipped or some minor mistakes. Boy, was I wrong? From not receiving weekly comics shipments to no longer getting an invoice is how badly the warehouse closing went wrong. We are lucky. I ordered comics from Diamond, Penguin, and Lunar. Other stores that ordered all their Marvel comics from Diamond had a much tougher time.

The average comic customer does not know the names of the distributors that supply comics to comic stores. I know that for most of my comic collecting days as a customer, I did not know who Diamond Comics was until Marvel left Diamond to try their distributor to ship comics, Heroes World. And somehow, that got to be such a dumpster fire that entire titles would not get shipped to my local comic store. That is how I learned about the distributors at the time. The comic store owners would be upset that Marvel could not ship comics they had ordered, and this was a nationwide issue. I remember, after years of only shopping at Dragonfire Comics, having to go to other local comic stores to get comics not for me but also for Dragonfire Comics because somehow their Marvel orders were so screwed up. This also caused people from other stores to go to Dragonfire to get comics that their local store had ordered but could not get. Following all this, DC would go to exclusively Diamond along with Image, and Marvel, for whatever reason, could not get their issues worked out and ended up coming back to Diamond, giving Diamond a monopoly position for the direct market, as all other distributors were either bought by Diamond or went bust.

No, Diamond is still not here! Photo by Tom Sorensen.

Diamond Comics was the sole provider in America for Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, IDW, Valiant, and other publishers for twenty-five years. I learned that my options were to deal with Diamond or not sell comics at all. I ordered Magic the Gathering and other gaming material through multiple distributors and wondered why that was not true for comics. In my mind, the more distributors carrying comics, the better. For example, if one distributor I use does not have a game in hand, another might. With Diamond being the only big supplier to comic stores, if I did not have a new comic in stock and neither did Diamond, that was that. I had become an outreach for Diamond Comics and felt that was limiting my business of selling comics.

Then COVID-19 hit. Businesses had to shut down. Many comic stores were not open due to COVID, which made it very tough to pay bills, such as the Diamond invoices for comics they were receiving, though they couldn’t sell the product due to being closed. The details of exactly why DC left Diamond are murky. Diamond stopped sending products and still was not sending out material to stores. Then DC Comics left Diamond and went to two distributors to ship their comics, one being Lunar, which DC still goes exclusive through to this day. I was very thankful that DC started up new releases on Tuesdays, and Diamond sent out comics again soon afterward. As the years went on, other publishers started using Lunar instead of Diamond to carry their comics, such as Image Comics, even if they spoke out against DC for leaving Diamond in the first place.

Comic Store Wars

They say competition is good for customers. Lunar packed their shipments in a box with bubble wrap; for years, various store owners wanted Diamond to pack their shipments better to cut down on damages. After decades of not listening, Diamond finally improved its packaging after Lunar started its DC shipments.

Then Penguin, a book distributor, managed to get Marvel Comics to switch over to them. Diamond would then be receiving Marvel Comics from Penguin to ship. Our first Penguin shipment and other comic stores’ first shipment was a surprise. Penguin shipped out comics in just a card box. There was no padding of any kind, just the comics right up against all the corners of the box. We were lucky and did not have damage; others were not as lucky. Some were unfortunate enough to order variants that were only available if a store ordered 100 copies of a title and had them arrive damaged with no replacements available.

Chaos! The customers are going crazy! Photo by Tom Sorensen

I hope this helps comic collectors better understand the vendors that comic stores use. December has been a heck of a month. My sales, of course, are down; it is hard to sell material that is not in when it is supposed to be. I ordered some of the smaller Marvel titles, such as Ghost-Spider, only through Diamond, so I had people telling me they had seen it at other stores, so why didn’t I order it through Penguin? Comic stores order months in advance, at the time I placed the order with Diamond I had no idea part of November and December would be chaos for Diamond. I use both to help in case of a mistake with one vendor. When Ultimate Black Panther #1 came out, Diamond had copies, but Penguin somehow did not. By using Diamond, we could have Ultimate Black Panther #1 copies available on the release day. Penguin not shipping any made the issue hard to find.

I was worried I ordered this month’s Transformers, a hot-selling comic for us through Diamond and not Lunar, for some reason because it has been that bad of a month. I made sure to double-check before the release date. Thankfully, I ordered Transformers through Lunar and received them on the day they were to be released. I imagine some stores that use only Diamond for Marvel are now considering using Penguin. Penguin offers free shipping, whereas Diamond and Lunar do not.

Christmas Eve Is Coming In Force

We are having a sale the day after Christmas on December 26th; the running joke with my customers for the last few weeks has been that Diamond will have a new comic shipment show up that day. If there isn’t a blizzard, it should be a busy day. If not, something is wrong. If it does show up, the odds are that I will have to put it in the back room and deal with it the next day. I thought Diamond would have things back to normal before then; it looks like I was wrong.

“I don’t know.” Customers do not like to hear those words from an employee or store owner when asking things like when the comics will be in. It was the answer we were getting from Diamond at the start of all this. Diamond finally stated they thought they would be moving out of the warehouse later on; they were doing a monthly lease, though oddly, they did not foresee someone else wanting the warehouse. The company or person that owns the property I do not blame them, if they got a new lease with someone new for a longer period of time and or more money, they are a business and that is what they should do. Was a six-month lease or a new lease for when Diamond was more ready to move out as an option? Who knows.

Get me my comics, or I will prize her! Photo by Tom Sorenson.

People have been asking me why I do not write about opening up a store anymore or more comic-related subjects. I over the years covered a lot, I do not want to beat a dead horse. If there are topics you would like me to write about, let Bleeding Cool know. January is the slowest month of the year for most retailers, so I should have more time. I hope this will help my customers and other customers to other stores better understand what is currently going on.

“}]] Comic Store In Your Future… with 2024 ending like a dumpster fire, Rod Lamberti takes a look at challenges a comic store currently faces.  Read More