Diamond Comic Distributors has gone bankrupt. As someone who once worked in a comic book shop, back in the 80s and 90s, it was something of a shock. I came over all nostalgic for their blue logo. I still have a number of cardboard boxes crammed with comics that have the blue Diamond on the sides. They are, of course, the perfect size to store comics, since that's what they were designed for.

Diamond was pretty much the only way to import comics into New Zealand, and from the mid-90s it had a near monopoly on US-printed comic books distribution worldwide. They offered a sales model that was designed to protect themselves. Basically, no take-backs. You paid for the comics upfront, and any you didn't sell were your problem, usually heading straight into the bargin bins. Given the low margins on comics books this led to some agonising decisions about how many copies to stock on any given title.

It was a system that did not reward taking risks. A new title, even if it was from a big publisher, could only be judged on the short description and black and white picture in the catalogue that was sent to the shop months ahead of time. You were ordering pretty much blind. So, for example, when Alan Moore started writing Swamp Thing there were several months of issues before my local store upped the quantity of copies for each new issue. Those early Moore issues were hard to find in my neck of the woods.

Number Ones of most titles sold fairly well, especially from the big two publishers (Marvel and DC). Customers always seemed willing to take a change on a new comic, and first issues were seen a possible investment opportunity. One that publishers really began to over-exploit in the 90s with multiple varient covers, reflective vovers, inverse covers, and many other gimmicks.

But, a big problem for a shop retailers was you had to order issues 2 and 3 before you got that first issue. So the question was how much did you think the sales were going to go down by for that second issue? If the comic was actually good sales might even go up! The lag, imposed by distance and made worse by a lack of information, led to some decisions that were, in hindsight, unfortunate. Frank Miller's Dark Knight, and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's Watchmen were all severely under-ordered by my local store. But having shortages of a title was better than having a bargin bin overflowing with unsold numbers twos and threes of titles like Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters and Pre-Teen Dirty-Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos.



Also, Diamond's management often took exception to the content of some issues and refused to ship them. In 1987 the Alan Moore penned Miracleman#9 had a childbirth scene that meant they pulled it from distribution, with the CEO writing that he could not “stand by and watch the marketplace become a dumping ground for every sort of graphic fantasy that someone wants to live out. We have an industry to protect; we have leases to abide by; we have a community image to maintain.” Criticism of that decision was widespread. Why was childbirth deemed too far, where as, violent fights, shootings, stabbings, etc. were all fine? We eventually got copies, but well after other issues in the series had some out. By 1993 Diamond backed down on censoring titles, and even started to raise funds for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.



It was not just censorship of material that got Diamond in trouble. Sometimes they just refused to carry a title, for whatever opaque reason. As the only distributor that effectively killed the book. Rumours of grudges and blacklists circulated. They had absolute power over the market, and some suggested it had corrupted them.

From what I've read Diamond was the victim of the Covid-19 lockdowns, but also its own hubris and business model.

When the Covid shutdowns hit Diamond stopped shipping to retailers. They seemed to reason that without foot traffic the comic book store market was dead. They informed printers to no longer send them new comics. They effectively killed their own market.

Diamond didn't seem to count on consumers actually wanting more comics to cope with the boredom and tedium of lockdowns, and that many retailers, such as the shop I'd worked for, had robust mail order systems in place. DC quickly organised their own distribution company, and Marvel and IDW followed some time later. Retailers were happy to abandon Diamond, feeling that Diamond had already abandoned them. Penguin Random House were the big winners out of all that. The big loser was Diamond. In January of 2025 they filed for bankruptcy.

— Gunwallace

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