The Case of the Missing Comic Books

As I have mentioned many times in this blog, I like comic books.  In fact, they are one of the main reasons why I was already reading by the time I entered kindergarten.  I still get a few a week, sometimes a lot, all but one or two a month from DC comics.  However, for the last two months, I haven't been able to get any, as there were none to be found.  Let's get into the details.  In the last week of March, just before I was able to pick up that week's pull, Diamond, the exclusive distributor of comics to the direct market, announced that they would be shutting down due to the disruptions of services stemming from the lockdowns sweeping the country, particularly those in their home state of Maryland.  While some of their warehouses nationwide had already started to get the following week's titles in, Diamond felt that this was the best thing to do.  It didn't hurt that the continent's main printing press for comic books, in Ontario, Canada of all places, was shutting down as well.  This meant that there would be no shipping of new products until the lockdowns were relaxed.  Many stores weren't even allowed to be open, although some did manage to get by with delivery of products already on hand and the small trickle of non-comic books merchandise that was still being shipped out.  There would be no new comics anywhere for the next few weeks.  Except at Walmart.  See, a few years ago, DC went into an exclusive deal to supply Walmart with special titles, with a mix of new material and reprints.  Many stores balked at this, leading DC to start reprinting special versions of the new materials to sell to the direct market.  In the following year, DC allowed for the new batch of Walmart titles to be sold to the direct market, a few weeks later and with a different cover.  This titles were still being sold at Walmart when no one else had anything.  (On a side note, I have been noticing these off-brand new comic books at Walmart.  I hadn't heard of the title nor the company that makes them, only that they are new.  I have no idea of what to make of them.)  Then, DC mad a major announcement in mid-April.  They were breaking their exclusive contract with Diamond, one they had helped to come up with that ultimately led to Diamond becoming the only direct market distributor of most comic books in the country, and started dealing with two new companies to provide product.  Technically, they weren't new companies.  They were actually start-up divisions of two major mail order subscription fulfillment services.  They would be splitting the country into geographically arranged areas to provide to any store that was still open and wanted to get in some new books.  DC was able to do this because they still had some of the overprinting from a few titles that they could use.  Naturally, this upset many stores, especially those that couldn't fully open.  Why would a store go through one of their competitors, just so they could sell a few comics? This announcement came just before Diamond said it would resume services in late May, albeit with an abbreviated schedule.  DC followed this with the announcement that stores would now be allowed to sell their product on Tuesdays, instead of Wednesdays, as had been the case for decades.  Supposedly, this would allow all of DC's products (trade paperback collections [tpbs] and original graphic novels [ogns], not just comics) to be sold on the same day everywhere.  Before this announcement, comic book stores would get to sell tpbs and ogns the day they came in, while book stores would have to wait until the next Tuesday, which is the usual on sale date for the majority of titles.  This way, all of DC's products would be on sale at the same time everywhere, with no one getting an extra benefit.  This new date would also apply to product received from Diamond, once they started back up.  The next shoe to drop, after so many, was that DC would be producing new product for the digital services.  The first lineup of titles was just the recent material from the Walmart comics, just repackaged without the reprint material included.  Still, it allowed DC to have 'new' product out for a long time before anyone else.  When Diamond then made the list of product available when the started back up, many of the title DC published early would be included all at once.  However, there appeared to be gaps in the schedule, for not DC but other companies as well.  It turns out that both Marvel and DC were delaying some bigger titles until more of the country had opened back up, so that everyone would get an equal chance at reading them.  What's more, Marvel would be shifting some new series, as well as an ongoing, to digital format only.  Reader would only get a physical copy once the series were collected into a tpb. DC would follow suit, with shifting the last few issues of two series to digital only.  Fans would have to wait a few months later to get the physical copy once the trades came out.  [Disclaimer:  I read the two series in question, one of which was already cancelled before this mess cam about.] This came on the heels of DC announcing a new digital series, which may or may not ever get a physical run.  This is angering many long time readers, many who prefer physical copies over digital, where ownership is difficult to determine.  The consensus suggest that this is all a plan of DC's parent company, AT+T/Warner, who would make more money on the digital copies than with the physical books.  The final straw in all of this?  The shipment of many of the DC titles that had already been sent out with the new distributors was delayed to Diamond.  This means that I won't be getting all of my late books this week, when the first shipment finally arrives.  I don't know when I will get them either.