St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Feb. 8, 2025 — Comic book shops and publishers in Newfoundland are still navigating fallout more than a year after Diamond Distribution, a major player in the industry, filed for bankruptcy in the United States.
A Fragmented Distribution Landscape
The collapse of a comic book distribution giant has left retailers scrambling and publishers facing financial setbacks.
- Diamond Distribution’s bankruptcy in January 2025 disrupted the supply chain for comic books and related merchandise.
- Local retailers are now sourcing from multiple distributors, increasing administrative burdens.
- Publishers, like Black Panel Press, experienced significant revenue losses and are adapting by focusing on direct sales.
- Industry experts say the shift highlights a move away from a near-monopoly distribution model.
For decades, Diamond Distribution supplied comic books, board games, collectibles, and figures to shops across North America. “Truly, everything you see in my shop, like, at one point I could have ordered from Diamond,” said Kerri Neil, owner of Downtown Comics in St. John’s. The company’s bankruptcy filing created a ripple effect, forcing businesses to adapt to a more fragmented system.
What impact did Diamond Distribution’s bankruptcy have on comic book retailers? The bankruptcy forced retailers to seek out multiple distribution companies to maintain stock, a process that, while offering more independence, presents new challenges.
Neil now orders from eight different distribution companies. While she acknowledges problems with Diamond’s dominance and the expense of using the U.S. exchange rate and shipping from New York to Montreal and finally to St. John’s, the new system isn’t seamless. “As soon as we could jump ship … we were out of there,” she said. But managing multiple vendors adds complexity. “They all have different ways to order. Different companies they ship with,” Neil added.
David Stephens, a sales clerk with Timemasters, echoed this sentiment. They now work with “easily” a dozen companies, and while some offer better financial deals, it’s “definitely a bigger hassle.” “Mostly it’s the amount of invoices, right. Because we have to keep track of multiple invoices from, you know, multiple different vendors,” he said.
Financial Strain on Publishers
The disruption extended to local publishers as well. Andrew Benteau, founder of Black Panel Press, used Diamond as a distributor and was owed thousands of dollars when the company went bankrupt. He has since secured IPG as a distributor, but the financial impact was significant. “We’ve had no revenue from books distributors since … [the] end of 2024 until last week, we got a payment of $600,” Benteau said.
As a result, Benteau took a second job in advertising. “Book sales have been nothing compared to what they were. We were selling almost 1,000 books in a month at the peak there,” he said. “The Q4 of 2024, and last so far this month, I think I’ve sold about 40 books through our distributor.” He’s now focusing on direct sales through his website, but acknowledges the limitations. While he’s established connections with Downtown Comics and Timemasters, reaching every comic book shop directly is impractical.
Often, stores prefer consignment, meaning Benteau may not receive payment for months. “It’s going to take a long time to get back to where we were in terms of comic distribution,” he said.
The End of an Era?
Benjamin Woo, an associate professor of communication and media studies at Carleton University, explained that Diamond had a dominant position in the comics industry since the 1980s. “For a while, Diamond had an almost de facto monopoly on comic book distribution, especially in the area of periodical comics,” Woo said.
Now, shop owners must monitor multiple catalogs, some with overlapping titles and others exclusive to specific distributors. Woo noted that comics are a specialized market, and distribution companies cater to those specific needs. “That produces these kinds of uneven results … where a trade bookstore going through a trade book distributor is going to be able to get something perhaps at a different time than a specialty comic store can bring it in,” he said.
Neil observed that customers can now order comics online with delivery in about a week. Woo warned that if customers shift their purchasing habits, comic book shops could lose business to digital distribution sites. “Some people will … continue to read comics, but the ways they access it will change. And that has impacts for the economics of the industry,” he said.
Neil added that some companies take four to six weeks to process an order. “If someone’s ordering, like, a specific book, I have to say, like, it could be here in two to 12 weeks,” she said. “It’s such a large window of, like, when it’ll get processed and shipped and arrived.”
Stephens said there are “growing pains” as distributors fill the void left by Diamond. For a time, Timemasters couldn’t get Conan The Barbarian. “It was cost prohibitive for us to order through Lunar and then have it shipped across the border,” Stephens said. Eventually, a Canadian distributor was secured, but customers missed issues in the interim. “They’re not happy about it. They’ve had to go online and try to source the issues they’re missing,” Stephens said.
