Hey, Folks!
Well, I hope everyone is out today enjoying this amazing weather! After the broiling we took for the last couple of days it was quite refreshing to not find myself doused in sweat 5 minutes after exiting the shower this morning. It will also be nice to have the door open at the store rather than having to rely on the AC to keep things relatively comfortable.
It’s been quite a week…again…for the comic book industry. I know all of you who follow such things must be curious as to what D.C. Comics latest bombshell announcement means to Monarch Comics in the micro and what it means to the larger industry. I’m never quite sure how much to talk about the back end of the business. How much is “need to know” VS “no one’s business”, but in this day and age with so much information being vomited up on the internet it’s really kind of pointless to sit her and pretend that potentially explosive things aren’t going on behind the scenes. As much as I would sometimes like to go back to the pre-internet days of sensitive business information being blared out to my customer base I know that those days are long gone. So if you aren’t interested in how the sausages get made around here then please feel free to skip down a couple of paragraphs to where I start crowing about the latest issue of Batman…lol.
D.C. Comics announced on Friday afternoon last week that they would be discontinuing their business relationship with Diamond Comic Distributors and moving all of their product to two new distributors, UCS Comic Distributors and Lunar Comic Distributors. Never heard of them before now? That’s because they didn’t exist until about 6 weeks ago. You might recognize them better under their retail store names, Midtown Comics and DCBS. D.C. Comics tapped both of these retail outlets in order to distribute a few titles that got printed before the Apocalypse kicked into gear and shut everything down, including Diamond Comic Distributors. It was, in some quarters, a good option for retail outlets that were still open despite the pandemic and who needed new product on the shelves in order to keep their businesses afloat and to feed the desire for new comics for their customers. This worked particularly well for Midtown and DCBS as the bulk of their business is mail order. All comic shops were invited to sign up to get these comics quicker than they would from Diamond who were still operating at a shutdown level.
As I do believe I explained in another EDitorial, Steve and I discussed the option and decided against participating, mostly because Diamond had assured us that the books in question would be available to us once things started to open up and because we were still closed because of the Ohio lockdown. We correctly reasoned that having new books wouldn’t really help us until we were able to, you know, actually sell them. I did start the process for signing up with UCS if for no other reason than to see what kind of website they had and what kind of service we could expect if we decided to go with them after all. I wasn’t terribly impressed with their website, but, at the time, I understood that it was something that was hastily thrown together in order to begin servicing retailers immediately. I never finished the application process, more fool I.
After this announcement there was a lot of discussion between comic book retailers over D.C.’s motivations and endgame regarding the introduction of a new distribution paradigm. Many were concerned over the fact that these distributors were actually online competitors and some thought it was a conflict of interest and a general bad idea to begin feeding these companies our business information. I didn’t really see the harm it at first, as D.C. Comics framed this as a temporary measure put in place to deal with this particular situation. It worked in D.C.’s favor in a couple of ways. It allowed them to get new product out after two months of nothing, it appeased two of their largest online customers (Midtown and DCBS), and it allowed them to release the new material digitally while dodging accusations from retailers of cutting them out of the profits. It all seemed very reasonable to me and while I thought they were jumping the gun a bit I also realized what a unique set of circumstances we found ourselves in and thought that this could possibly help the industry more than hurt it.
D.C. Comics, however, were playing things VERY close to the vest in this situation. Retailers had questions about these new circumstances and D.C. staffers whose job it is to liaison with us were not being particularly forthcoming. D.C. Comics started to settle into a pattern of obfuscation (“We don’t know.” “Those things are being discussed.”) followed by releasing announcements on Friday afternoons and then turning on the auto responses to their e-mail addresses. As more and more information started to leak in drips and drabs it started to become apparent that these two new distributors were not a temporary solution to a public health crisis, but instead were the shape of things to come. Right up until the official announcement, D.C. Comics were deflecting questions and comments from retailers regarding the changing of the status quo.
Now I can’t claim to have any inside information about D.C. Comics, their corporate masters at ATT, or even the new distribution outfits. I could discuss the rumors swirling around and the conspiracies being discussed behind the scenes between retailers, but that’s all they are….rumors. The most suspicious thing about all of this is the lack of open and frank information as to what D.C. Comics’ motives were in deciding to break off a business relationship that goes back over 30 years and how these kind of sweeping changes could possibly help out an industry that is already going through hard times because of a global health crisis. I can’t for the life of me figure out why there isn’t more transparency on D.C.’s part. I mean, if this big change is for the greater good of the comic book industry doesn’t behoove them to just come out and show us the big picture? Doesn’t all of this secrecy and obfuscation only increase the paranoia and anger of comic book retailers who are already in dire straits?
And I haven’t even begun to discuss the snarls and cracks in the wall that are already starting to appear behind the scenes. Just announcing that you are pulling out of a decades old distribution model and telling us it is for the good of the industry is not enough to make it so. Lunar and UCS have less than a month to be prepared to service over a thousand new retail accounts with D.C. Comics. That is national and international accounts. Can you imagine, just for a moment, the logistics required to make such a thing happen? Questions that still haven’t been answered also include whether Diamond will continue to carry backlist D.C. material (such as trade paperbacks) or what will happen to items ordered through Diamond that don’t make it out before the end of June. And those are just a few concerns that I have. I don’t even want to get into the various discount codes and the extra shipping costs that could potentially be down the line.
I’m really not interested in bashing D.C. Comics. I love D.C. Comics and their stable of characters and I have been following their books for a loooong time. They are also a significant part of my business. It gains me nothing to talk smack about them or loudly and publicly denounce them for any mistreatment, real or imagined. At the end of the day, no matter where I ultimately secure them, I will be carrying D.C. Comics product for a long time and I will continue to promote and enjoy their fictional output.
All of that being said, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit nervous about how all of this is going to eventually work out. Again, it more the lack of information that makes me nervous rather than any worrying over what we definitively know. I can only hope that our new distributors will be able to transition smoothly and that there will be no interruption of service. I can tell you that I have given them all of the information required to open an account and I have been diligent in making sure that I have ordered all of our D.C. titles through the month of July. We will all just have to take a deep breath and brace for the impact that his chance will make on this hobby that we all love and cherish. Maybe it will go off without a hitch and we will be able to enjoy a new era of D.C. Comics. At this point and after the year we have had so far a little optimism and good news can only be a welcome thing.
As a little side note to this “anti-rant” I’d like to mention that because of the distribution changeover there will be no new D.C. titles shipping the week of July 1st. Additionally it will be a week when Marvel will only be shipping trade paperbacks and hard covers. The good news is that is should be the last week of comic book “austerity” and that the following week D.C. will have a full slate of releases and Marvel should be following suit on 7/15.
Another bright spot on the horizon is Marvel Comics announcement this week that they will be releasing their Free Comic Book Day titles to retailers in late July! The titles include FCBD Spider-Man Venom #1 and FCBD 2020 X-Men #1! Of course, there is no news regarding having an actual FCBD this year and I can’t imagine how it could actually take place with he current health risks associated with large crowds, but it will be nice to get a hold of these two titles which were designed to preview and promote two of Marvel’s biggest events of the year. Naturally, we will have these titles available (X-Men on 7/15 and Spider-Man on 7/22) and free to all of our customers or, really, anyone who wanders into the shop. We might not be able to have a proper FCBD this year, but at least we’ll be able to pay it forward to those of you whose rock solid support has kept us afloat all of these years.
The long anticipated Batman #92 came out this week written by James Tynion and penciled by Guillem March and it does NOT disappoint. This issue of Batman has the best Batman VS Riddler story that I’ve seen in a long time. Every moment of Batman working his way through Riddler’s latest ridiculous (and deadly) riddle trap is a pure pleasure especially since he also dealing with Deathstroke at the same time. I haven’t gotten suck a thrill out of reading a Batman story is quite some time and the whole sequence reminded of one of my “Golden” periods of Batman from the mid-late 80’s. It’s Batman doing his best to outsmart a super villain (or two) without all of the sadness, depression, and darkness that has been a staple of the character for decades. We also get to see the new villain Punchine, Joker’s latest femme fatale, and her first interactions with Harley Quinn and Catwoman. I’m not totally sold on the character yet, but between her appearance in this issue and her secret origin story in this week’s Joker 80th Anniversary Special I’m starting to warm to her. Eagle eyed readers should note the interesting framed photo on the table in the issue’s final page as I do believe it may play into this story’s big finish.
I think I’ve bloviated enough about life, the universe, and comic book retailing for one sunny summer afternoon. I think it goes without saying that we have yet another small comic release next week and this will be the trend until mid-July. We can look forward to the first issue of D.C.’s big “summer tentpole” series, Death Metal, as well as a truly huge amount of new comic collections from Marvel and D.C. I also want to let everyone know that because of the small amount of new product shipping in the week of 7/1 that I will be out of the office for the holiday weekend. I figure since we are already closed on Independence Day it won’t be too much of a big deal if I take off Friday and Sunday as well.
I hope everyone has a GREAT weekend!
Eddie