One blog I found called this situation “The Grinch Who Stole Comics,” and in a year that saw Diamond Comics Distributors increase the minimum purchase order necessary to get a book featured in their Previews catalog and witnessed the closing of Steve Geppi’s Gemstone publishing company, who among other things put out the annual Overstreet Pride Guide, it’s easy to let supposition and tempers run high.
I assure you that most of the opposition in my portion of this week’s column is half me playing Devil’s advocate for the Comic Shop Guy (see ridiculous flat tire rant during my first response to Gregg) and half my genuine confusion with Diamond’s decision to skip the final week of the year. Hopefully you can get a bit of insight into the industry’s history of distribution and dealing with 5th week Wednesdays from two guys that have always been on either side of the middleman.
Stephen Mayer: Diamond Comics Distributors announced Tuesday afternoon that they would not be shipping new comics during the 5th week in December.
There doesn’t seem to be any precedence for not shipping new comics for an entire week, regardless of the day the holiday falls on. This will affect the creators, publishers, and retailers. Despite their claim that they spoke with their suppliers and customers, it sure feels like a unilateral decision when we hear about it for the first time on Comic Book Resources just like everybody else.
Gregg Schigiel: Hm. I’d heard about this, but not in any really complete or full way. I went ahead and did some cursory looking into it, and still might do more simply to be informed, but I’ll continue with what I’ve been able to figure out so far.
I haven’t spoken to anyone on the “inside” about this stuff, so I don’t know how folks at the various publishers or even other creators might be feeling.
I do remember that when I was at Marvel, if there was a 5th week in a month, there’d be some sort of “5th week event” to fill the gap. Marvel and DC did ‘em. Tangent Comics was one out of DC. Tom Brevoort and I did a few of ‘em, like MARVEL’S COMICS and the HEROES REBORN/DOOM’S DAY stuff back in the late 1990’s (I think the Heroes Reborn stuff’s being collected into a trade one of these days). I’m pretty sure the Amalgam books were also done as 5th week books from the big 2, but I can’t remember for certain that they all came out in one week or not. Unrelated to the main discussion here, those were fun on an editorial level (and in theory, by extension, on the creator level) because they were often approved on concept alone, so we, at the time, had a pretty free range to hire talent or develop concepts without worrying about those things “selling” the book – the idea was that the concept was what sold the book. Whether that actually was the case or not…I don’t know.
It doesn’t seem like 5th week events are a thing so much any more. But then again, books shipping on time seems less common these days too, not for nothing.
I certainly can’t know why the decision was made to skip that week. All conventional wisdom seems to indicate this was a decision on Diamond’s part (as I’m sure retailers would want product to sell and I’d imagine publishers would like to sell product). But as to the why of that choice, I don’t know. Perhaps it saves them money there at the end of the year to not ship books? Maybe they’re giving all Diamond employees a paid week off between Christmas and New Years because they’re being sweet. Maybe “the economy” is the scapegoat here, as it seems to readily be these days. Maybe they also don’t like that comics are $4 a pop and are doing this in protest (ha!).
Obviously, the bigger issue is that there’s no alternative to Diamond, so if Marvel or DC or Image or Boom! or Jeff Smith or Terry Moore wanted to put something out that week, they’re up a creek. Or are they? Are there alternative means of distribution out there we may not be aware of?
SM: Diamond’s reasoning, as their spokesperson indicated, is that in order to get books out to everyone on Wednesday, they stagger their shipments with 1-day, 2-day, and 3-day business service. Thus, they ship to their 3-day service customers out on Friday. Since UPS and Diamond will be closed Friday for Christmas, they say that their three day customers could not get their books on Wednesday like their 1 and 2-day customers.
To poke holes in their logic, Christmas, as with most holidays, is usually followed with a one day delay in book shipments. If Diamond delayed new comics until December 31st, 3-day customers could be shipped on Monday the 28th, 2-day customers on Tuesday the 29th, and 1-day’s on Wednesday the 30th. They'd have to eat the cost on more next day shipping because UPS only allows "critical service on New Years Eve.
Yes, new comics would then come on New Years Eve, but Diamond didn’t have any trouble inconveniencing us last year when books came in on Christmas Eve, and by way of the Butterfly Effect, making Carly and I late for Christmas Eve services at her parents church, forcing us to take 421 instead of 85 where we caught a flat tire that couldn’t be fixed until the day after Christmas, which required me to drive back to Greensboro on a spare, which caused it to wear down and blow out on the way to the tire center.
Take THAT Diamond!
But what are our alternatives?
We can order directly when dealing with smaller publishers. One of our subscribers, who also happens to be a Harvey award nominated artist, said that you can order copies of his latest comic, ZEKE DEADWOOD: ZOMBIE LAWMAN directly from SLG. In talking to Brian Smith the other day, I believe he mentioned that a lot of shops circumvented Diamond to get their copies of STUFF OF LEGEND #1 after distribution on first printings of #1 seemed to have been botched somewhere along the way, shorting some stores completely and over shipping to others.
Yet there’s nothing you can do when it comes to Diamond’s exclusive “Premiere” publishers, Marvel, DC, Image, and Dark Horse. Those four companies, who are contractually obligated to deal to the direct market through Diamond, accounted for 84% of the comics shipped for July. So while Diamond doesn’t technically have a monopoly on the comic industry, and no one forced any of those companies to sign exclusively with Diamond, if a store boycotted Diamond, they’re potentially throwing away 84% of their sales. Maybe that’s not the right way to look at it, but I think it would certainly hold true here at Acme.
I’m not sure how Marvel’s mail order service factors into that. My parents got me a year subscription to Ultimate Spider-man and Ultimate X-Men through Marvel for Christmas right after I got back into comics, but they usually arrived late and were very often damaged. I’d end up replacing them at Acme anyway.
GS: I was talking to someone the other night, as you put this topic in my head, about if there’s anyone big enough in comics who could release and self-distribute something for that week that’d get people into stores…and it was hard to say that exists.
My initial thought was what if Jeff Smith were to produce something, but even then, is he (a) big enough (though he’s pretty big) and (b) would people come to the store for one single item.
It seems that without Marvel or DC and their creators/characters there’s no REAL draw…and how would they get around their exclusives with Diamond. And then I wondered if, as was done in the wake of 9/11, there was a collection of some kind put out, if that might get people to show up, And then I wondered if, as was done in the wake of 9/11, there was a collection of some kind put out, if that might get people to show up. So maybe if there was a book put together by the CBLDF or Kid’s Read Comics or something, that had the cooperation of the big guys, maybe. But even then, one item I don’t think would bring people to the store.
I know I’ve gone to the shop and had cases where I’d be buying one book and decide to put ‘em down and just buy them the following week because it seemed like it wasn’t worth it…and that’s me already IN the store!
I’m guessing Marvel’s subscription service, if it even still exists, is a whole different animal. But, if there are no books shipping that week I’m sure there’ll be no books on the schedule for that week.
I know, or at least I’m fairly certain, comics publishers use different distributors to get their books into book stores and big box retailers than they do to get them into comics shops, which is an interesting thing with respect to exclusivity in distribution…I guess that’s just to direct market comic shops?
SM: Now both of the Big Two used to distribute for themselves. My friend Jay gave a really nice, brief history of those days on our message board:
The Heroes World fiasco was pretty much responsible for the current situation. Heroes World was a regional distributor owned by a fellow named Zack Snyder. I believe Snyder had worked at Marvel way back in the seventies before he went off on his own to start a catalog business and a chain of comic specialty shops. Seventies kids may remember the Heroes World Catalog, and they'll certainly remember the ads for Mego action figures and other super hero related merchandise that appeared in comics back then.
Anyway, by the nineties Heroes World was a direct market distributor serving the New York and New Jersey area. When Marvel bought them in the mid-nineties and announced that they would be the publisher's sole distributor, all kinds of hell broke loose. It was, I believe, the first time in the history of the direct market (which, by then, was actually a "direct" market in name only) a major publisher had gone exclusive with a distributor. Retailers were upset because that meant additional shipping costs and more complicated ordering procedures. It also meant that Marvel, with no competition on the distribution side, could call their own shots for pricing, minimum orders and so on. Some comic shops even tried to initiate a boycott of Marvel.
And, obviously, the other distributors were terrified. Marvel Comics were then, as now, the best selling comics on the market. For distributors, losing Marvel meant losing 50% or even more of their revenue. Diamond, in a brilliant act of desperation, made two bold moves. First, they began making exclusivity deals with the remaining publishers, including DC. Second, they purchased one of their biggest competitors, Capitol City Comics. The big question at the time was, would that be enough to allow Diamond to survive?
I imagine Diamond owner Steve Geppi breathed a sigh of relief after that first Wednesday that Heroes World distributed Marvel Comics were set to hit the shelves. It was a disaster. Orders were wrong, late, or never arrived at all. On top of that, the phone system at Heroes World HQ went down and angry retailers were unable to call in their complaints. It turned out the former regional distributor was unprepared to do business on a national level and they soon went out of business. By '97 or '98, Marvel was exclusive with Diamond. And that's how we got to where we are today.
An interesting little twist to all of this is a long rumored clause in DC's contract with Diamond. The story goes that DC, in exchange for letting Diamond be their only distributor, has an option to purchase Diamond outright. As I understand it, the option went into effect in 2005 and ends when DC's contract with Diamond expires in 2011. Given Steve Geppi's well publicized financial woes of late, I wouldn't be surprised if Diamond become a division of Time-Warner in the near future.
Which would be a case of history repeating itself. Back in the fifties and sixties, DC's book and magazine distribution arm, Independent News, was the jewel in its crown. Up until the late sixties, they were the only distributor of Marvel Comics, and they used their power to control Marvel's market share by putting limits on the number of books Marvel could publish every month. It was the success of Independent News that paved the way for the purchases of Warner Bros. and Time-Life, which, of course, eventually led to the giant media conglomerate Time-Warner. So we may be coming full circle.
GS: I’ve heard it said that that bit of history, that moment in the life of comics/direct market, was the most damaging, destructive thing to happen to comics in maybe the whole lifespan of comics to date…or at least the biggest cause of the current state of comics with respect to how they’re bought, sold, pricing, etc.
I don’t know if that bold a claim can be proven, but I do see the inherent damage just on a free-market level. Without ANY competition, the companies and Diamond control the terms and costs, and that’s tricky.
I wonder if, when that DC exclusive expires, if maybe someone new might enter the game as a competitor to Diamond (or whoever buys Diamond, if it’s bought), which could be a bit of a game-changer.
I remember when the Heroes World/Capitol City/Diamond Stuff was happening, which was before I “went pro” and reading the reactions and all. I was always struck by hearing retailers complain about having to order from more than one distributor. Now, barring the additional stuff about shipping and minimums and all, to my layperson understanding, I thought the resistance to more than one retailer was madness. It’s not like other businesses get all they’re stock from one place. A grocery store doesn’t get their eggs and their rice from the same place, do they (maybe they do). Or some restaurants for sure don’t get their drinks and their meat and their produce from one sole source. So doesn’t multiple distributors sort of become the price of doing business on some level? Isn’t there a certain amount of adaptation that has to happen on the part of everyone along the chain in such a case?
I know we’re going off the subject at hand, and I don’t mean to impugn retailers now for things I recall from 15+ years ago, but I also often find comics folks, myself included, very averse or wary or reluctant to changes, be it in characters/storylines, format, or business practices.
So if the scenario Jay lays out at the end of his bit were to happen, would comic shops on the whole be able to adapt and survive, or would that be, as the original event was, another massive blow to comics retailers and put the whole party to bed?
SM: Maybe the forced evolution would cause the publishing aspects of these companies to re-evaluate how they’re doing everything. Maybe you wouldn’t get as many mini series. Maybe if they had to eat the middleman cost of distribution they’d have more sympathy on the folks paying $3.99 for their books.
There’s been a lot of learning and a lot of hard facts and a lot of supposition on our parts this week (as if there isn’t always on my end of things). When it comes down to it, and this is the selfish, but honest answer, I’m hurt as a fan that this is happening.
My other blog isn’t called Living Wednesday to Wednesday for nothing. There are days and weeks when things suck for all of us and the rite or ritual of going to the store to get your books, getting home to your favorite chair, and escaping into the stories is the little chunk of sanity you can carve out for yourself. That probably goes double amongst the in-laws and finances and office parties that surround the holiday season. Two weeks from now when books are delayed a day because of the Labor Day holiday, on that off-Wednesday we’ll still have 20 or 30 subscription customers come by throughout the day to look at an empty shelf despite the fact that we announced in the e-mail and on the website and reminded everyone in person that things would be a day late.
Comics are a part of the rhythm of our lives and when it comes down to it, I don’t think it’s cool that a single corporation gets to administer such a case of arrhythmia to an entire industry, top to bottom.
GS: Dude, we’re all just sort of shooting in the dark. As much as you’re involved on the retail end and as much as I’m a cartoonist, we’re still on some level outliers. If anything, you’re considerably more connected to the reality of things than I am.
You put an interesting perspective on it for a slightly jaded, less ritualized sort like myself. I don’t even go to the store on Wednesdays…I go on Sunday afternoons.
Though I think on the publisher side it might have less of an effect. I’d imagine creators and even editorial staffs might like the week off…might give them time to play catch up or maybe just take a break. And on the business side, I don’t know. Didn’t Marvel just a month ago or so put out something like 30 books in one week. Seems on every side of this thing one could have a selfish reaction.
I can’t make heads or tails of the logic behind a whole lot of it, but in the end it certainly appears that sympathy is not one of the main factors involved, at least not sympathy for the ritual as you describe it.
It might be, in this case, an opportunity for stores to try something new or different to get people in. Maybe it’s a sale. Maybe it’s a creator appearance/talk. Maybe it’s some kind of game or event that might get folks into the store and buy stuff, which, in the end, on the retail side, is the real blow. No new books means no new sales, clearly. And I sympathize with that. But I think if any store can figure something out it’s you guys at Acme.
Would it be a total jerk move for a store to only rack half the books the week before the skip week and then rack the rest on the skip week…you know, to give the ILLUSION of new comics? Though, I guess there’s a risk folks’ll just go to another store.
Actually, I’m pretty sure if you give free cotton candy with purchase that just might do it.
Who doesn’t love cotton candy?
SM: I appreciate the vote of confidence in our store rising to the occasion. Not to be a big tease, but we always like to do something nice for our customers during the holiday season, and this little hiccup is only pushing us to go even bigger!
Gregg Schigiel is a cartoonist, illustrator, and writer. He's worked as a penciller and editor for Marvel Comics and an illustrator and cartoonist at Nickelodeon in addition to creating his own characters and books. He's currently writing X-Babies for Marvel with artist Jacob Chabot and goes to the comic shop on Sundays in the New York City area. He'll be visiting Acme on October 24th as part of G-Man's Greensboro Cape Crisis as well as the X-Babies #1 Release Party! Check out his website at Hatter Entertainment.com.
Stephen Mayer makes his mama proud keeping his voice down while waiting Yankee Games at her house after she's gone to bed and pulling a Dante, blogging on his day off.
Of course I picked up the Marvel 70th Anniversary variant for Wolverine First Class #18 even though I don't read the book, but 1) it's Takeshi Miyazawa and 2) it's KITTY! I also got the covers for Avengers Initiative #27, X-Force #18, Secret Warriors #7, and Runaways #13.
