Wednesday 1 April 2020



Hello

Once upon a time this would of course be New Comics Day 
&
WILL be again one day
In the meantime...

Hope your as anxiety free as one can be in this new reality.

Everyone here is doing fine and we are all in touch,
 healthy and keeping our social distance from the world.

The Comics Industry?

Hmm that's a different matter all together.

There is A LOT of moving pieces in the industry at the moment from publishers to distributors 
and its impossible to predict what the outcome will be.

The big not great news came out that Diamond have decided to withhold payment to Comic
and Game suppliers.
In case you didn't know Diamond have a sister company Alliance that distributes Board games and collectible card games such as Magic the Gathering.
This is not a great situation what with Marvel and DC accounting for 80% of all new comics sold.
You can read about over at the very level headed ICv2 site
https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/45534/diamond-alliance-suspend-regular-payments

Where this all lands is anyone's guess but we have seen similar turmoil in the industry and survived it.

For fans who were collecting in the 90's this is familiar ground with the 'Distributor Wars' between Capital City
Heroes World and Diamond-who eventually emerged victorious.

Here is a brief timeline of those events from the fantastic https://www.comichron.com/comicstimeline.html

April 5, 1980: Capital City Distribution incorporates in Madison, Wis.

Feb. 1, 1982: Steve Geppi founds Diamond Comic Distributors. 

1984: Capital City Distribution begins publishing indexed preorder figures in its Internal Correspondence newsletter. Diamond Comic Distributors would follow much later, in its Diamond Dialogue magazine.

1987: DC comics stops sending subscription copies Second Class, so it stops printing circulation figures.

1988: Diamond purchases Bud Plant Inc., a major West Coast distributor, giving it a national reach for the first time.

Sept. 18, 1992: Diamond announces the acquisition of Titan Distributors, the United Kingdom's largest comics distributor.

May 29, 1994: After Marvel breaks ties with regional distributor Comics Unlimited following that distributor's public criticism of Marvel's mail order "Marvel Mart" circular, Diamond acquires the assets and liabilities of Comics Unlimited.

Aug. 1, 1995: Marvel begins exclusively distributing comics to comics shops through its own distributor, Heroes World Distribution.

July 1996: Diamond Comic Distributors absorbs Capital City Distribution. Its reports now covered most of the non-Marvel comics shop sales.

April 1997: Marvel folded Heroes World and returned its sales to Diamond. Diamond's sales reports thereafter covered most of the comics ordered by comics shops.


We really are just spectators as these ancient Kaiju bloody the waters.

We are probably a good while off from regular shipments
 of new comics into the UK I'm afraid to say-
but we will keep you posted.


Stay safe
Stephen
&
The Dave's Family
xxx

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