The best comic book covers of the week – 08 June 2020

Posted on June 8, 2020

3 min read

The marriage, is officially over. After decades of business, DC Comics has officially severed all ties with Diamond Comics Distribution, the organisation that has a monopoly of getting comic books into shops across most of the world. So what’s DC planning? A move towards releasing their comic books through their own distribution network that they set up in April once Diamond temporarily halted operations due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Comic book shops are not happy about the move, as they say that DC’s new strategy is going to lead to a more fractured market with even thinner product margins in the long run. Newsarama has a decent collection of responses from various comic book shops in the US of A, with many as tore owner reeling from the announcement that will require them to purchase stock from Lunar Distribution, Penguin Random House or UCS Comic Distributors. Which basically comes down to comic book shops buying from their own competitors.

“Without the DC purchases through Diamond, my discount will be less, making my business no longer profitable or viable,” said Charlie Harris of Charlie’s Comic Books in Tucson, Arizona, to Newsarama.

I don’t believe that it will be profitable or practical for most retailers to order low return-on-investment periodicals from a second distribution source,” Hibbs wrote on Facebook. “The extra shipping and handling involved is going to melt profit, while the endless extra hours trying to enter and massage data into point-of-sale systems that were not designed to quickly process mass data dumps from anyone other than Diamond is going to be nothing but waste for thousands of individual store fronts — when what they need from their suppliers is nothing but disheartening.

There are a ton more stories from comic book shop owners in the link above, and I have reached out to locals to find out how this move impacts on them as well. I’ll update on that situation in a separate post. Until then, here’s a look at the best comic book covers of the week!