5 May 2020

As some of you may have heard, DC Comics is trying to use a couple of comic book stores newly christened as distributors to deliver a handful of their books over the next couple of weeks bypassing Diamond Comics which is their normal distributor.  Diamond who also owns Alliance Game Distribution has been closed since the last week of March due to the pandemic and new comics not being printed.  There was one final week of books that were sent to Diamond prior to their closure by all comic companies and they have been sitting waiting to ship when they are able to function and UPS starts delivery to business addresses they currently wont deliver to which includes the state of Washington.

DC contracted with the two comic book companies to deliver part of the books that were already printed in order to release those books digitally and declare Tuesday the new comic book day.  

Basically DC is looking at the situation as a way of pushing out their product quicker to the digital market.  The excuse was so that DC lines up with the rest of AT&T media release schedules.  As there was no attempt to change new movie release dates to Tuesday or any other products which currently have other release days, the argument is suspect.  The majority of stores in the US are not even able to accept shipments or even sell curbside so trying to push books on them makes little sense.  They are trying to look past comic book stores and do as much direct as possible and they see online as their future and they see us as a detriment to their business.  Its their product and their choice but now instead of a business partner they are now just another vendor.  It sucks but it is what it is.

I have chosen to not deal with the secondary distributors as it pretty much puts us in the same position that would exist if Target and Walmart were forced to buy their inventory from their primary competitor Amazon.

Going forward, Diamond will be reopening in three weeks and the books that DC is currently trying to distribute around them are primarily the 100 page giants (the Walmart version and not the direct market version) several small titles and several reprint issues all of which will be available to us pretty quick through normal distribution.  

Currently DC is set to begin shipping on 20 May and Marvel on 27 May and things will hopefully get back to normal.