More on Diamond Bankruptcy: Lunar reacts; PRH owed $9 million

Diamond Comics Distributors bankruptcy filing this morning set off a seismic bomb in the comics industry. My DMs have been off the charts all day; I had to turn off notifications just to work on this article. We’ll have a more analytical piece tomorrow but for now some facts gleaned from court filings and social media postings. 

As one FB commenter put it, “this feels like the safety rails are gone,” and the comics industry is entering a new phase, the Post Diamond era. 

Developments:

Lunar: The distro announced they would pick up Diamond’s FOC orders for 1/13, with a caveat or two. Image Comics has been available via Diamond as a sub-distributor but It seems unlikely that they will continue to be available. 

Due to Diamond’s announcement today, Lunar will be accepting late 1/13 Image FOC orders from customers to fulfill their existing order placed with Diamond. Orders placed solely through Diamond will not be fulfilled. All 1/13 orders must be placed through Lunar. Image will be printing based on all order numbers that were received yesterday across all distributors. You must place your updated 1/13 Image order through Lunar by 1/15/2025 5:00 PM EST for your order to be covered.

To place your Image 1/13 FOC order, go to the New Order page. Scroll down on the FOC Due Dates filter to find Past Dates listed. Select 1/13 and type “Image” in the Publisher search box. Any ratio variants that FOC’d on 1/13 will need to be added for you through customer service. Please email your ratio variant request, including the product code and quantity, along with any questions to xxxxxxxxxx

Filings: Diamond’s bankruptcy filings are available and run to hundreds of pages. The most immediately interesting one is the list of the top 30 unsecured creditors, which is led by Penguin Random House, to the tune of more than $9 million. The second company on the list is Bandai, with only less than half of that owed, $4.4 million. 

Seven creditors are owed more than $1 million, but only one is a publisher, PRH. Most of the companies on the list are toy companies, suggesting that the shift to carrying other kinds of merchandise was in full swing. Other top creditors who sell books include  

Disney Consumer Products ($1,712,447), Simon & Schuster ($600,144), Lunar Distribution ($496,967), Viz Media ($421,204), Titan Publishing ($357,417), Square Enix ($315,295), Dynamic Forces (Dynamite) $217,317 and Udon Entertainment $202,694. Please note that most of those companies also sell toys so the debt may not be all comics. 

Here’s the Top 30 in table form. 

Some other tidbits from the filings: Diamond lists four subsidiary companies which are consolidating the filings, Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc., Diamond Select Toys & Collectibles, LLC, Comic Holdings, Inc., and Comic Exporters, Inc. These are owned 99% by non-debtor SG Resource LLC, and 1% by non-debtor Stephen A. Geppi Revocable Trust. 

Interestingly, Diamond $41 million loan from Chase is secured by Debtor Diamond Select Toys & Collectibles, LLC (“DST”), and non-debtor affiliates Rosebud Entertainment, LLC (“Rosebud”), Game Consolidators, LLC (“Consolidators”), and Renegade Games, LLC (“Renegade”), all listed as guarantors and all various companies own by Steve Geppi or his corporations in some form. For instance, Rosebud Entertainment formerly published Baltimore Magazine.  

There is a long list of affected companies, but just to give you an idea of how many comics publishers will be affected by this, here’s a list of “Key Customers” those who bought from Diamond:

Key Customers

2428392, Inc. dba FYE
Amazon.com, Inc.
Animextreme Inc.
Baker & Taylor Books, Inc.
Barnes & Noble, Inc.
Booktopia Direct Pty Ltd (Air)
Booktopia Pty Ltd
Boom Entertainment, Inc.
BZVirtual LLC
Chaos Pop Pty Ltd
Comics-N-Stuff
Cosmic Comics, Inc.
DCBS, Inc.
Diamond Select Toys & Collectibles, LLC
Distribution Universe, Inc.
Dorksidetoys, Inc.
Dynamic Entertainment, LLC
Electronics Boutique Canada, Inc. Entertainment Earth, Inc.
Harrison’s Comics & Collectibles, Inc. Heathside Trading Ltd
HEO GmbH
Idea and Design Works, LLC
Image Comics, Inc.
Indigo Books and Music, Inc.
Indy Comics LLC
Ingram Book Group LLC
Kadokawa World Entertainment, Inc. Kaiba Corporation
Kieren Consulting, LLC
Lone Star Comics, Inc.
Malta Comics & Collectibles, Inc.
Marvel Entertainment, LLC
Replay Toys LLC
Rosebud Entertainment LLC
Source Point Press, LLC
Sure Thing Sales LLC
Terminal Distribuzione S.R.L.
The Marmaxx Group, Inc.
The Westfield Company, Inc.
THG OnDemand Limited
Things From Another World, Inc.

Torpedo Comics Vintage & Trade, Inc.
Valiant Entertainment, LLC
Walgreen Co. 

And a list of “Consignment Parties, which includes publishers who have been out of business for a while – Diamond was still selling backstock. 

In short, there is almost no facet of the comics industry that this change is not going to affect. 

The New Era begins. 

More to come…….