Alliance Entertainment — no relation (before now) to Alliance Games — announced today it has won its bid to acquire “substantially all” assets from Diamond Comic Distributors. Alliance is a Florida-based distributor of toys, video games, and vinyl records. Alliance Entertainment trades on NASDAQ as AENT, where its market cap today is $200 million. The … Read more
Words that were unthinkable a decade ago: Diamond Comic Distributors has filed for Chapter 11 protection. The company said it’s received financing to continue to operate as it sells off assets. Universal Distribution, which once wholesaled for Diamond in Canada, has bid for Diamond UK and Alliance Game Distributors. Diamond is seeking offers for its … Read more
Nearly all the partners have changed, three years after the pandemic caused Diamond to shut down for several weeks, prompting DC comics to ultimately take its distribution elsewhere. Image announced today it was moving to Lunar as its exclusive distributor effective in September — though Diamond also announced that it would continue to supply those … Read more
The 2021 Comichron/ICv2 report is out — and it’s a blockbuster. Comics and graphic novel sales rose 62% to $2.075 billion; up 70% vs 2019. All formats grew in what was the the industry’s biggest year ever in dollar terms, even when adjusted for inflation. Graphic novels exploded, with manga having an enormous year. Traditional … Read more
April 2022 comics order estimates are online at Comichron. They find TMNT: The Last Ronin #5 from IDW topping 100k copies, with Brzrkr and Something Is Killing the Children placing third and fourth once their variants are combined. Amazing Spider-Man #1 would’ve been by far the market leader were all Marvel’s sales at Diamond. Diamond’s … Read more
We’ve posted the monthly estimates for February and March 2022, and there’s a lot of good news to them. It looks like the Direct Market had a $145 million first quarter, which beats the same three months of 2020 — our last winter with data from Diamond — by $28 million. The Marvel adjustments are … Read more