The Four Color Media Monitor

North Central Pennsylvania news site has a columnist who's following the PC narrative that DC was wrong to stop using Diamond as their distributor. They say:

This not only hurt Diamond it hurt the greater landscape. Lunar and UCS are online giants. They distribute thousands of comics across the country. They also work with Midtown comics, which again, fall directly in competition to local stores. Those giant sellers can offer discounts directly to the customers that local shops just can’t afford to do.

Orders for pull list can be thrown together on their site. It’s simple and easy, but it takes away from the local comic shops which have been the lifeblood of this industry for years.

Look, everybody deserves a piece of the pie, but when local shops are forced to eat off the same plate as the companies looking to compete directly with them, you can see the in balance that takes place. It’s eating off the same plate but being forced to eat pudding with chopsticks against a person using an oversized spoon.

Local comic shops have supported this industry for years. They kept the major publishers afloat through difficult times. DC’s move shakes the industry and it puts fans and local shops in a difficult position.

Yes, this is just the comic book industry to some people, but it also paints a bigger picture that could be heading toward us in the future as mega giants like Wal-mart and Amazon take over everything. Local shops shouldn’t be in this position. I will stand firmly by supporting my local shop. Goodbye DC comics for me until something can be fixed.

So what does that mean? That he's not going to drop DC because story merit is bad, but rather, because they dared to step out of an accepted politically correct line of business and choose one that could benefit their distribution better? Let's be clear. If there were more distributors similar to Diamond, this wouldn't be too much of an issue. But when such a corrupting monopoly is in place, it's not healthy for the overall industry. And besides, if the store side wanted to, I'm sure they could negotiate beneficial deals that would ensure they get discounts and other bonuses to aid their business, or, more precisely, Lunar and UCS could, if that's what it took to ensure good relations.

What's funny though is the discrepancy between the part telling about discounts for customers, and fans supposedly being put in hard positions. This doesn't make sense. Is there some difference between "customers" and "fans" I'm not seeing? Ridiculous. The fans who are the customers could order some products by mail, and then they'd get what they want that way. Some stores, as I've mentioned before, are closing their physical sales shop but still continuing to do business online, so it's clear that however this turns out, business is collapsing, and the mainstream led to much of this downfall by dragging down the quality of their storytelling and art. So what customers are actually left, let alone fans?

That's why, while this may have some benefit for DC in distribution, it's not bound to avail them long term unless they improve their storytelling, which includes moving away from rabid politics and agenda pushing. And they might also want to retire the pamphlet, along with company wide crossovers, one of the other faults bringing down their storytelling. All these years, these very news columnists ignored the steady decline in story merit, yet now, when a company chooses to change their distributor, only then do they sit up and take notice? No wonder they're such a joke.

Labels: dc comics, msm propaganda, sales, technology