The Four Color Media Monitor

The Baltimore Banner wrote some more on the history of the now collapsing Diamond Distribution, how they wound up becoming a monopoly, and eventually their business plummeted:

Some comic book fans rejoiced at the bankruptcy news, lamenting Diamond’s longtime monopoly and recent issues with delivery delays.

But others said its dominance provided stability to comic book stores. Diamond helped create Free Comic Book Day, a popular promotion held each May. And it served as a quasi-bank for many retailers: When stores were behind on paying for new books, Diamond would extend credit, enabling them to stay open when they otherwise might close.

“For all of their ills and the very fair criticism leveled at Diamond,” said Benn Ray, who co-owns Atomic Books in Hampden and worked for Diamond in the late 1990s, “one of the things that, I guess, has been good, or significant, for the industry was the promotion and the evangelizing of comic books.”

Well gee, anybody who wanted could surely do that by founding their own separate distribution business. If this guy wanted to, I'm sure he could've set up a competitive business and given retailers a choice. Instead for well over a quarter century, nobody showed any interest in challenging Diamond's monopoly any more than they did in changing the formatting for comicdom. So many publishers still have the chance to change from pamphlets with little more than 20 pages of story to a paperback/hardcover story with a few hundred pages in length, yet they repeatedly throw away said chance for the sake of a path on which they likely don't even know what they want.

For years, there was no refusing Geppi. Diamond had exclusive rights to distribute just about every comic that customers craved, and retailers had a simplified stream of inventory. Rather than juggling several distribution companies, they had a one-stop-shop with Diamond, where they could acquire products from DC, Marvel and a host of smaller publishers.

The U.S. Justice Department took note, investigating the comic book distribution industry for possible antitrust violations in the late 1990s, but taking no action against Diamond.

Local comic book store owners stressed how influential Diamond has been and applauded the leniency it extended to stores over the years who were behind on bills. Without Diamond, it’s possible fewer comic book stores would exist today.

“Stores may have needed a little bit of help, and Diamond comes through and helps them,” said Marc Nathan, who has had an account with Diamond since he opened Reisterstown’s Cards Comics & Collectibles in 1984. “The other distributors do not.”

Once more, why not try to develop one that does? If anybody let down by their recent incompetence wanted, I'm sure they could put something together to alleviate the frustrations. Yet it didn't happen, and all these years we cope with a monopoly that didn't bode well in the long run. It should also be remembered that in the past decade, at least a few dozen specialty stores closed down when readers began walking away from the loathsome products Marvel/DC were turning out at the time, and if those don't make money, what good is Diamond either way?

In a related subject, The Seattle Times discussed the issue while interviewing a local specialty store manager, and a most interesting statement is made:

On Jan. 14, Diamond Comic Distributors filed for bankruptcy, throwing the future of one of the nation’s largest distributors of comic books into doubt. For most of the 21st century, Diamond held a monopoly over the distribution of monthly comic books in America — not the bound paperback graphic novels that you can now find in any bookstore, but rather the stapled, floppy 32-page magazines that used to be found on spinner racks in drugstores.

Well in that case, what's all the fuss about? We're dealing with a format that's become unviable and expensive, and instead of making the argument for changing to paperback format, everybody's whining about the loss of a distributor that dealt far more with said outmoded format? There's bookstores devoted primarily to science fiction and health topics, and if they can manage distribution needs as well as they do, then comics specialty stores can do the same with distributors for regular books, and arrange for delivery of paperbacks and hardcovers from anybody specializing in that kind of distribution. Yet this is never brought up in any of these interviews, which only makes the situation sadder still.

Had Diamond entered bankruptcy while it still held a monopoly over comics distribution, the survival of nearly every comics shop in the United States would be at risk. But after Diamond paused operations in the early days of the pandemic, the two most prolific publishers of monthly comic books in the U.S. — DC Comics and Marvel Comics — broke their exclusivity with Diamond to form partnerships with two new comics distributors, and other smaller comics publishers soon followed suit.

Many of the Seattle-area shops that previously relied almost exclusively on Diamond to deliver shipments of new comics, action figures, graphic novels and other nerdy paraphernalia have now diversified enough that the bankruptcy hardly impacted their weekly release.

Joel Bowyer, owner of Lynnwood comics shop Phantom Zone Comics, still finds Diamond’s distress to be bittersweet. “I think every comic book store has a weird love-hate relationship with Diamond,” Bowyer says, quickly adding, “there are definitely a few that have a hate-hate relationship. But for all of its faults, I think it is very important to the comic industry,” he says.

But what about story and art merit? Without any of that, it's no wonder Diamond was rendered meaningless. If the products don't sell, even Diamond won't make money on what they deliver, and as this news strongly suggests, they didn't.

For decades, many comic book stores prided themselves on insularity — they were secret clubhouses intended only for fans possessing years of specialized knowledge. When people think of comic book stores, Bowyer says, they likely recall the shop in “The Big Bang Theory” — a cluttered, inaccessible, unwelcoming space.

Phantom Zone Comics is purposefully designed to be the opposite of those stereotypical comics shops — an airy, well-lit space that invites browsing. All the items on sale, from the latest comic book releases to a truly mind-boggling array of He-Man action figures to a beautiful display of collectible pop culture statues, are given their own distinct bays, allowing customers the time and space to take in the breadth of each display before moving on.

And Phantom Zone’s six employees are trained to excel at customer service — something that has not always been a specialty of comics shops. Bowyer recalls a time years ago when he was the customer of a (long since closed) local comic book store. “I would be the only person in there and the employee behind the counter wouldn’t even talk to me until I got to the register,” he exclaims. That’s why Phantom Zone employees greet customers when they enter the shop and happily offer recommendations. “We are customer-focused,” Bowyer says.

That attitude is helpful for Alderwood mall patrons, many of whom have never stepped foot inside a comics shop before. Bowyer says the store’s large selection of comics for kids and the manga section collecting translated Japanese comics have both seen an increase in foot traffic from first-time shoppers.

Phantom Zone presents multiple large, useful displays of great entry points for new readers around the shop. One display is full of Deadpool and Wolverine graphic novels for fans of last summer’s blockbuster Marvel movie. And because the serialized manga collections, which often run for dozens of volumes, can be confusing for novices, Phantom Zone offers a giant table packed full of the first volumes of popular manga series including “One Piece,” the pirate adventure book that was recently adapted into a live-action show on Netflix, and “Cat + Gamer,” a gentle slice-of-life series about a new cat owner who uses lessons from her favorite video games to train her new pet.

If those are modern stories of Wolverine and Deadpool from way after 2000, it's regrettable whenever specialty store managers promote those without distinctions. And while I'm sure some specialty stores did take on a ridiculously insular image, I don't buy into the notion all of them did, though I realize there have been some very poor notions of how to retain the best possible personality even as a "nerd". I certainly don't think stores of the past were ever inherently similar to how the disgraced Neil Gaiman portrayed them in an issue of the Sandman series. On which note, it's entirely possible the aforementioned nerds read it as well, ironically or not. Being a nerd isn't exclusive to specific partisan politics, after all.

Joel Bowyer, the owner of Phantom Zone Comics, can’t say enough good things about Daniel Warren Johnson’s new “Transformers” comic that updates the toys and comics of the 1980s into a more modern milieu. “As a child of the 80s, Transformers are always my thing,” Bowyer says, “but this book has just been so good — a really cool and different reboot.”

For readers just getting into superhero comics, Bowyer recommends “one of the first books I ever read — ‘Batman: A Death in the Family.’” The controversial 1980s storyline, which saw the villainous Joker murder Batman’s sidekick Robin, is “a classic, and young people still love it today,” attracted to the story’s heightened sense of danger and drama.

Gee, what's so lovable about a story where Jason Todd wound up being assaulted, and left to face death by explosion, all because the editors were up in arms over a previous story where Todd allegedly caused a rapist to fall to his death from a building? And is that the fictional character's fault, or the writer's? I think Marv Wolfman did a good job creating 3rd Robin Tim Drake, and Chuck Dixon a good job writing the later series, but that doesn't excuse how poor the handling of Todd's demise happens to be. The saving grace, I suppose, was that the 1988 storyline was stand-alone, and not part of a crossover.

Authors Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have been making noir comics together for decades now. Bowyer says, “I’ll read any of their books like crazy,” but he especially recommends their “Reckless” series of detective thrillers and the lighter-toned “Where the Body Was.”

Writer James Tynion IV’s horror comics, particularly the Stephen King-influenced “Something Is Killing the Children,” are very popular with Phantom Zone readers, and Bowyer calls his weird conspiracy series “The Department of Truth” “one of my secret favorite books for a while now.”

Anyone who's going to recommend stuff like that as much as promoting the aforementioned Batman tale at Superman's expense isn't improving the already sad situation with the medium. Some of this stuff reeks of leftism, which is probably no surprise coming from a city and newspaper with such a leftist bent. If the audience at their stores really craves these kind of embarrassments, that's regrettable, and head-shaking.

And it's likely some of the same stuff Diamond built their business on too. Maybe that's one of the real reasons why not to miss their business after they fold.

Labels: dc comics, golden calf of death, history, indie publishers, licensed products, manga and anime, marvel comics, msm propaganda, sales, violence