Hang on let me find a link that's not Bleeding Cool...

A multi-million dollar fraud involving Magic: The Ga...

A summary for anyone unfamiliar: Diamond Comic Distributors has essentially had a monopoly on comics distribution for ages. Maybe since around the 90s? Maybe a little earlier/later. Idk, I wasn't there.

Anyway, during the pandemic, when they stopped distributing but still took everybody's money and stopped paying out to publishers, the big players finally got tired of their Hot Mess Services and started breaking off. I believe DC bounced first.

ohhh boy

Marvel went non-exclusive. Publishers down the ladder started either entirely jumping ship or splitting their distribution. I thiiiink Dynamite might be a largest exclusive client left. And they do have side-companies that deal in games, TCGs, figures, etc.

Some time last year, things really started to fall apart. They owe a lot of money to a lot of people. This finally escalated to a point at which they filed bankruptcy.

The speculation and bidding goes back and forth. The actually auction happened...recently? Late last month, early this month? Alliance Whatever Whatever wins the bid.

Diamond immediately tries to back out and go with another bid.

A judge smacks them back down.

Alliance acquires Diamond, deal supposedly finalized 4/25. Done and dusted. Except...!

Except today, lol.

A big part of Alliance's interest in Diamond had to do with their contract with Wizards of the Coast, which Diamond supposedly did not disclose was due to expire literally tomorrow. That's the latest claim in the new lawsuit, at least.

Like, I read the expiration date on their already-extended contract and guffawed. Christ.

Anyway, I'd like all this to be over but it's also hilarious.

holy lawsuits, batman

Lotta suing that's thus far just kinda fallen through.

Diamond may or may not have to shift their chapter filing as well. I don't know much about bankruptcy proceedings, but it seems to be a difference between being about to sell of assets/debt and being forced to liquidate.

Is Diamond a shitshow? Yeah. Would smaller pubs be able to find another distributer at their scale? Ain't lookin' good, folks. Mismanagement could really kneecap the ability of small publishers to get themselves into stores.

that's horrible

always the big ones that ruin it for the little guy

Yeah, it's potentially a real big bummer we've got on our hands.

that really sucks 😕 not fun to deal with at all

Chriiiist...

Courts have accepted backup bid, which is a joint deal. One of the quoted Company Dudes (specifically for the company now set to obtain DCD/DBD) mentioned a familiarity with comics/comic shops, at least as a kid, so... That might be a plus!

will keep our fingers crossed man it's such a messs

lmao, yes. My boss sent me a link to the announcement article, and I mentioned, like "at least until they get into the nitty gritty of the purchase and potentially also decide that Diamond misrepresented its assets". But hopefully that won't be a thing! But who knows!

Love that a legit question as to the continuation of a chunk of this industry is "how deep is this guy's fandom??" Haha.

Breaking: "Massive" layoffs at Diamond Comics today

Introduced to this concept a little before the story broke via "Oh, you emailed Steve? Well, you're probably not hearing back from Steve."

Man...

I'm now in a BC article and my backup contact may have also been fired. Not sure, since I can't remember his last name and I'm not logging into my email rn.

Welp.

Christ...

Your job really shouldn't need a Celine Dion power ballad for the soundtrack, but...

PRH pulling all their publishers from sub-distribution with Diamond, apparently. That leave Diamond with... Dynamite, I guess. And smaller pubs.

I don't remember who else is left, but this might have retailers breaking from Diamond altogether if they don't do a lot of Dynamite/indie-ish sales.

as someone who worked in supplychain for quite a while i get it but also eeek.

I still don't really know what's going on with Diamond and it's making things increasingly stupid every day, lol.

You want to know when your book's releasing? Sorry, I have no clue! Is Previews coming how, requiring me to write the catalog entries? Nobody seems to know!

This whole matter seems to just be several poorly managed companies whacking each other with lawsuits until they're all collectively beat into some form of submission.

Alliance won the bankruptcy bid, Diamond tried to go with runner-up Ad Populum, judge ordered that they had to go with Alliance as the winning bid, Alliance accuses Diamond of being dishonest about assets, etc. and backs out, Ad Populum returns victorious, immediate layoffs, more major publishers pull out entirely...

Alliance hires several of the laid off Diamond employees, Ad Populum accuses them of using their previous position as winning bidder to snipe "trade secrets"... So that's another lawsuit/action.

Dynamite claims they're owed $500K in back-payments plus legal fees, right now immediately, or something to that effect, and now Diamond/Ad Populum has just countered that claim with another action.

This is the last "major" publisher they have left.

Good god. So uh... how's that résumé coming along?

lmao, I mean... I've got better-looking job titles now! So that's something. Will it mean much if this and every other US-based indie pub collapses? Probably not.

But there's just so much happening in the world and I'm honestly not panicking about the possibility just yet. If it happens, it happens. It's just so, so stupid.

Welp, Dynamite's moved to Lunar. Or they at very least aren't exclusive with Diamond anymore. This leaves Diamond 2.0 without any 'big' publishers.

They also still are reportedly not making payments to publishers and have terminated "No Cost (Re-) Orders," the process by which publishers obtain books for shows, their own stock, etc. So they're holding the product hostage.

Oh, and the PREVIEWS catalogue will no longer be published in a physical edition. Online-only.

The last isn't a HUGE detriment, I'd think, but I know a lot of people like flipping through it and finding things. Useful tool, but it's not completely gone.

Oof... I've been seeing the dribble down effects of this at work (delayed books, no Comic Shop news, etc) and hearing the behind the scenes stuff is a mess

I know at least one regular who buys/asks about Previews every month so he's probably not gonna be pleased about this turn of events

though lmao at the guy who came in back in... I think it was March who bought a Previews and was like OH THIS WILL BE VALUABLE, IT'S THE LAST ISSUE!! and me looking at the solicits for the May issue on our site like yep sure is!

should have waited a few more months my guy smh

Yeah, I think... May-for-July will have been the last one? But, hey, there's still time to snag that one maybe!

Just got forwarded a news release about DC moving to Universal, so now the speculation is that PRH may move to sub-distribute with them.

Freakin' Zenoscope left Diamond, even, so... Really all that's left are the guys that barely anybody's heard of (no offense to my own place of employ, lol.).

I just don't see most retailers, particularly small retailers, bothering to delve into Diamond's offerings now without a physical book showing up at their door. They're invisible now.

They're basically required to make the jump to Lunar/PRH/Universal at this point. Diamond's just going to be a time sink for books that people aren't buying in remotely significant amounts.

Old Diamond's (I think. I've also seen it reported as Universal/New Diamond) move now is...claiming consignment stock has defaulted to their ownership so that they're able to liquidate it and keep the money (to maybe go towards their debt payments).

Diamond does not own the product in its warehouse. It's a distributor holding product for publishers/companies in order to fulfill orders to stores.

Breaking: Old Diamond intends to sell off comics inv...

Virtually all of our books are in Diamond's warehouse. I have zero doubt many other small publishers who've partnered with Diamond function in a similar way in which they don't have their own warehouse space. This is essentially all of our inventory.

Unless there's a cache somewhere I don't know about, lol.

But that would leave us with nothing to sell. And delayed/non-existent payments for the past several months plus owed money from the past year-ish means we can't print new books.

So idk. Hopefully the judge says "no, that's bullshit."

Their argument is that everyone should have filed a specific piece of paperwork during the bankruptcy process, but nobody was informed of this to my knowledge. The sheer number of publishers listed, including bigger names, leads me to believe that nobody was made aware of this possibility. Even companies that feasibly have lawyers on-hand are listed.

How are people supposed to know that they have to file paperwork to save their stock when Diamond's been claiming "business as usual!" throughout the process? Who fuckin' knows.

Anyway... Diamond, ladies and gentlemen.

yeah that's a good way to get sued

but things like that are why no one was really mourning the loss when it looked like they might be for real gone

For sure. Definitely a scoop of "yes, please leave" alongside it sucking ass that they're likely taking a huge wave of small publishers out with them.

Again, not sure at all of the legal viability of what they're attempting here. Hopefully it gets beaten down. If it goes through, idk was suing can even do if we are talking Old Diamond. They have nothing but debt.

yeah the worst part of a monopoly is that they become the infrastructure for an industry, so when they do die it hurts the people who aren't big enough to find their own

Yeap. And now those who can scrape up and move (fewer businesses if everyone's stock is yoinked) are just going to move to the same 1-2 distributors. Rinse and repeat.

Now Diamond Comics, The Debtor Is Suing All The Comi...and now we're here.

They're just filing against everyone in alphabetical order it seems.

Previous rulings made it so that Diamond had to file against every individual publisher in order to get rulings on whether consignment stock belongs to them. I think the expectation from there was that they'd come to the table and settle rather than...actually attempt that.

But they are, in fact, actually attempting that.

Mind that there's still a hearing coming up regarding whether or not publishers can escape their contracts. Which is somehow still a question after the bankruptcy because hahaha capitalism law.