Or the alternate title, “When diamonds aren’t forever”.

Today comic book fans learned that Diamond has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This may not mean much to non comic fans, but for us nerds this is going to be very interesting. Diamond was the only way to get comics from the publisher to the comic store. In recent years Marvel, DC, and some others have started to distribute their own books. Comic shops have to order from multiple companies to get their books into the store. Marvel and DC titles will be showing up, but what about the others?

The biggest problem as I see it, is the struggle smaller publishers will have to go through to get into shops. Diamond has their monthly catalog, Previews, which shows comics two months ahead of time. Plenty of time to find some interesting title from a small press and place an order through your local shop. Diamond would then send all of those issues from all of those smaller companies to stores across the nation.

One of my friends who is very familiar with Diamond used to say that Diamond is still around because no one else wants to do the work. Now someone is going to have to step up. Someone will have to become a hub to get the product from all of the companies, get them into one place, and then send out the orders. It is a massive undertaking that can’t be created overnight. Maybe one of the current alternatives like Lunar (DC) or Penguin (Marvel) branches out to carry every book. Or maybe these titles can’t find distribution and publishers close their doors.

Maybe this isn’t bad news. Maybe it will be a spark to look at new options. Bring back the newsstand. Spinner racks across the land. Why is Shudder the only comic book on the Barnes & Noble magazine racks? If users can easily post video and audio on their social media, why not post their own comics? Follow me on YouTube and something like YouTube Shorts allows flipping through pages. Change breeds innovation and that’s where it looks like comics are heading. Although, Innovation is also the name of a long shuttered comic company.