Should have posted this earlier but forgot with all the different comic and gaming related things going on. Here’s the text straight from Diamond itself.

Dear Valued Customer,

I’m writing to share one of the most challenging messages of my career.

Earlier today, Diamond made the difficult but necessary decision to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This step is intended to stabilize our financial foundation and protect the most vital aspects of our business.

This decision was not made lightly, and I understand that this news may be as difficult to hear as it is for me to share. The Diamond leadership team and I have worked tirelessly to avoid this outcome but the financial challenges we face have left us with no other viable option.

Chapter 11 will provide us with the opportunity to restructure and address our financial obligations. This process will likely include the sale of key assets of Diamond Comic Distributors.

We have already received a commitment from Universal Distribution to purchase Alliance Game Distributors coupled with a signed Letter of Intent to purchase Diamond UK, and we remain committed to pursuing offers for all Diamond lines of business.

What does this mean for you?

I want to reassure you that, with secured financing in place to support our operations, Diamond Comic Distributors is committed to continuing business as usual throughout this process.

Our plan is to continue fulfilling orders in a complete and timely fashion and we are working hard to minimize any disruptions to your orders.

We will be as transparent as possible during this process and will keep you informed of significant developments. If you have any questions, please reference the Retailer FAQs below, also available on our Retailer FAQs page on the Retailer Services Website. With further inquiries, as always, you can submit a ticket via our online Retailer Support Center or contact us at [email protected].

Thank you for your support. We are committed to your business and ensuring that your needs are met as we navigate this process.

Sincerely,
Chuck Parker
President, Diamond Comic Distributors

Now what specifically does this mean?

Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code is a reorganization process that allows individuals, partnerships, and corporations to reorganize their finances. It’s often used when a business is more valuable as an operating entity than if it were liquidated.

So now they’re not going out of business completely but they are restructuring because they’ve lost a lot of clients. It’s definitely not looking GOOD for them but it’s still possible to pull out of this, get bought, etc.

This is definitely going to cause some shakeups, most notably the article I just posted yesterday about Vault self distributing, and I’m sure more to come. Looks like from articles at other outlets (ComicsBeat and ICv2) that they’re getting money from their bank to support them through the restructure and hopefully they are able to at least reorient themselves in the new environment they’re in now with a large number of their customers leaving for PRH or Lunar.

Vault comics has announced the launch of direct-to-retailer distribution of all new Vault titles, to operate alongside its existing distribution channels.

Vault’s direct-to-retailer distribution platform will launch on February 3, with select key backlist and frontlist titles immediately available for order. Additional backlist and frontlist titles will be made available to order in the coming weeks.

Retailers interested in setting up direct sales accounts can sign up here: https://vaultcomics.com/direct

New retail accounts that sign up before February 28 will receive free shipping on all orders for the first six months. Products will be made available to retailers at discounts of at least fifty percent of the retail price, with automatic additional discounting per order based on total order cost. Thereafter, base discounts will be determined by account ordering volume, and free shipping will continue for qualifying orders. Packing, shipping timelines, and shortages and damages policies will meet or ​exceed industry standards.

Concurrent with this, Vault is making broad adjustments to its publishing plans to best align formats and release dates across its distribution channels including direct-to-retailer distribution, Lunar Distribution, and Simon & Schuster. These adjustments will require delays or cancellations and new solicitation of upcoming Vault titles. Changes to formats and release dates will be announced in the coming weeks.

“We want to make sure we deliver our books to fans, comic shops, and booksellers in the best way possible, said Vault CEO Damian Wassel. “We believe launching direct-to-retailer distribution is the right step for our business, our creators, and our fans, and we look forward to delivering some incredible books straight to the retailers who helped us build Vault.”

I’ve created a new Top 10 Watchlisted books widget because I thought hey this would be fun. Everyone can see it and maybe that’ll interest you in the watchlist feature if you haven’t already taken the plunge. None of these are surprising. I WANT THEM ALL.

If you ARE a Patreon of mine, when logged in, you’ll see the new “FAB” (floating action button) which is a nice gear icon that will float along the page with you so you can see some of the extra page options. I may add more to this eventually but right now it’s just watchlist related functions. I thought it looked nicer.

I’ve also done some somewhat slight but welcome style updates around the site. Colors, font sizes, button shapes, all that kind of stuff. Just making things look nicer. The details popup on books is a totally custom popup now and I can mess with it as much as I want. I’m also playing around with adding more types of info in there before too long.

The filters at the top of the table now are pretty checkbox filters instead of select boxes. I really like these a lot more especially on desktop. They’re scrollable too just like before but they just look nicer.

I fixed a few bugs here and there, mostly with the watchlist. If you see anything that seems broken, as always, drop me a line on the contact page.

Finally, this is mostly another “I have cool things now too” type of addon that doesn’t affect you all directly, but I build myself even more tools for keeping book dates up to date AND I built out some semi automation for grabbing solicits. So that should mean less time sitting here slapping them together which means you get them sooner. Win-win on that (I semi-automated Image, Dark Horse, and IDW right now). The rest is not really worth mentioning because it’s mostly just prettying stuff up our admin area and making my code better. I just like making these updates so people know I am in fact still doing stuff. Next up for this sort of stuff is trying to automate actually grabbing new books and adding them. It’ll be from Penguin publishers to start but will allow us to far more rapidly add new books which, again, is always a win for the end user here as you get info faster!