
Diamond Files for Bankruptcy | News and Analysis

Yesterday, Diamond Comics Distributors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The news sent shock waves through the comics industry, and while it’s a bit insider baseball-ish for the rest of the world, it will likely have visible consequences for book people in the future. In addition to being an important part of the comics market, Diamond runs Free Comic Book Day and publishes the Previews catalog and website, the most complete listing of comics available for sale (and one that goes back for decades). Here’s a quick look at the implications of yesterday’s news.
First, a disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, and bankruptcy is a complex topic. (Here’s an explainer for the curious.) There are also a lot of unknowns at the moment.
Diamond has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which allows the company to continue doing business while it restructures in order to reduce the burden. So Diamond isn’t going away. They will continue to fulfill most orders to comic shops, and they have pledged to support Free Comic Book Day this year. The changes have already begun, though, as Diamond will no longer be distributing Image titles starting in early February, a change that will affect some comic shops.
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The company is making moves to sell its UK arm, Diamond UK, to Universal Distribution, a Canadian company, and Universal may purchase Diamond’s game distributor, Alliance, as well. It’s likely that Diamond will also try to sell Diamond Book Distributors.
Beyond that, the picture is less certain. At one time, Diamond was the sole distributor to the comics market. That changed in 2020, and now the market is served by Diamond, Lunar Distribution, and Penguin Random House Comics Retail, but many comic shops still get most of their comics from Diamond.
In addition, while many publishers have more than one bookstore distributor, a handful of smaller publishers, including DSTLRY, Dynamite, and Udon (and Manga Classics) use Diamond Book Distributors.
According to the bankruptcy filing, Diamond has debts of between $50 million and $100 million, with the largest unsecured creditor being Penguin Random House, to which they owe over $9 million. Other book publishers on the list of the top 30 unsecured creditors are Simon & Schuster ($600,000), Viz ($421,000), Titan ($357,000), Dynamite ($217,000), and Udon ($202,000) (in round numbers). For more detail on this, check out this article at ICv2.*
Unsecured creditors may or may not get some or all of their money eventually. At the very least, there will be delays in payments. PRH can probably handle this, but it’s going to be tough for smaller publishers. Udon and Aloha Comics have already gone on social media to suggest that people order directly from their web stores.
The immediate effects of the Diamond bankruptcy, then, will be relatively minor from the customer’s point of view, but more noticeable for publishers and retailers

In the long run, the most significant factor may be that Diamond is the distributor that handles most small, independent publishers, such as Ablaze, Fairsquare, and Storm King. Before they were graphic novels, Jeff Smith’s Bone, Jimmy Gownley’s Amelia Rules, and more recently, Lumberjanes got their start as comic-shop comics distributed by Diamond. If Diamond’s reorganization results in dropping its smaller customers, those creators and publishers will lose their connection to the market. This in turn may have a ripple effect, with fewer opportunities for emerging creators to hone their work and build an audience in the world of periodical comics.
For those who want to dive deeper, here’s a quick primer on comics retailing and the part Diamond plays in the market.
For almost 25 years, from 1996 until 2020, Diamond was the sole distributor of any size to the comics market. Comics retailers have their own ecosystem, separate from bookstores, and Diamond was at the center of it. Comics fans use Previews to pre-order comics from their local comic shop and people like me use it as a database, because until recently it listed every comic and graphic novel available for sale.
Comics retailing is extremely niche. Comic shops are small businesses, most of them mom-and-pop shops with a handful of small chains. There is no Barnes & Noble of comics. Thus Diamond played an important function as a sort of central organizing principle. Most comics function on a two-month solicit cycle: The comics in the January catalog are available for pre-order for about a month and arrive in stores in March, for the most part. (Graphic novels and manga tend to run on longer schedules, as they originate in the book business.)

Unlike bookstores, comic shops buy their stock on a nonreturnable basis: They can’t send unsold stock back to the distributor. Comics are also extremely perishable; a new batch comes out every week, and sales drop off quickly after the first week on the racks. Many shops maintain subscription services (pull lists) for customers who order in advance, but the fact that comics are nonreturnable makes it harder for smaller retailers to take a risk on a new title outside of the blockbuster Marvel/DC/Transformers/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchises that are guaranteed sellers. Still, because single-issue comics are only distributed to comic shops, comic shops are the only place to discover new titles and creators.

Back to Diamond. For years, Diamond was comics, and it’s still true that the monthly solicit cycle drives the conversation around comics and Previews is the monthly journal of the industry. Diamond also supports Free Comic Book Day, the Comic Shop Locator service, and retail services such as ComicSuite (their point-of-sale software) and Pull List (an online preorder system). And while many retailers will be happy to reel off a list of Diamond’s shortcomings, a significant number will also give them credit for supporting comic shops during difficult times.
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During and after the pandemic, two other distributors came to the fore and scooped up Diamond’s biggest clients. Marvel, DC, Image, IDW, BOOM! Studios, and Dark Horse all migrated to other distributors, leaving Diamond with the smallest (and thus least lucrative) accounts. And now the math, as they say, isn’t mathing.

But if the big money has moved elsewhere, the soul of comics, in many ways, still rests with Diamond. Until this week, they were still the primary or secondary distributor for every publisher except DC, handling Marvel, Image, and other publishers on a wholesale basis, and while Lunar and PRH publish catalogs, Previews (along with its website) is still the most comprehensive source of information about current, upcoming, and to some extent older comics. Free Comic Book Day is still the national holiday for comics geeks and an important way for comic shops to reach the larger public.
Comics insiders have been arguing for decades that the old way of doing things is obsolete, and yet the direct market has not only endured but grown; ICv2 estimated that sales in comic shops were up for the first eight months of 2024. The only thing we can be sure of is that Diamond’s bankruptcy is going to change things; what that change will be remains to be seen.
Stay tuned! For continuing coverage of this topic, I recommend checking out the news sites ICv2 and The Beat.
*Disclaimer: I’m a contributing editor at ICv2, but Milton Griepp, the editor-in-chief, is writing the Diamond articles. Griepp was once the owner of Capital City Distribution, which was sold to Diamond in 1986. He has been in the business for over 50 years, and he knows distribution from the inside.

About Brigid Alverson
Brigid Alverson, the editor of the Good Comics for Kids blog, has been reading comics since she was 4. She has an MFA in printmaking and has worked as a book editor, a newspaper reporter, and assistant to the mayor of a small city. In addition to editing GC4K, she is a regular columnist for SLJ, a contributing editor at ICv2, an editor at Smash Pages, and a writer for Publishers Weekly. Brigid is married to a physicist and has two daughters. She was a judge for the 2012 Eisner Awards.
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Excellent article! I’ll be sharing this on my podcast and I’d love to have you as a guest sometime for an interview!
Thanks for the kind words! I’d be happy to be on your podcast!